Disabling DNS encryption can make domain lookups or the start of a webpage feel faster on a particular network, but it does not by itself increase broadband capacity. Whether it helps depends on the router, resolver, and how encrypted connections are established and reused. Without a controlled before-and-after test, the reported improvement is a personal observation—not proof of faster download or upload speeds.
What “faster” means when you change DNS
DNS translates a domain name, such as a website address, into an IP address before a device connects. A slow DNS response can delay the start of a connection, so pages may begin loading sooner when name resolution improves. But DNS is only one step: changing its transport does not demonstrate that the internet connection can carry more data per second. Google Public DNS likewise distinguishes DNS resolution performance from measures such as ping or traceroute latency in its DNS performance FAQ.
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That distinction matters for the claim that speeds improved “across my whole network.” If the observed change was quicker page starts, it may reflect DNS lookup time. A claim about faster broadband throughput requires separate, repeated download and upload measurements; DNS response time is not a substitute.
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DNS over TLS (DoT) and DNS over HTTPS (DoH) encrypt queries between a client and its resolver. DoT carries DNS over a TLS-protected TCP connection, commonly on port 853; DoH carries DNS within HTTPS, commonly on port 443. Cloudflare describes the transports in its DoT documentation and DoH documentation. A router’s “encrypted DNS” toggle could control either protocol or a particular profile, so the setting alone does not identify what was disabled.
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Encryption can add work when a secure connection is first established. The IETF’s RFC 7858 says DoT incurs additional latency at session startup and uses additional memory and processing. A TCP connection and TLS handshake can add setup round trips. Reusing an existing connection, keepalive, and TLS session resumption can spread that cost across later queries, so the overhead is not necessarily paid in full for every lookup. The standard describes protocol behavior; it is not a benchmark of any specific home router.
Why turning encryption off may—or may not—help
A slower secure lookup is plausible when a router or resolver handles connection setup inefficiently, or when the chosen resolver responds slowly on that network. But encryption is not automatically slower in practice. In Can Encrypted DNS Be Fast?, Austin Hounsel, Paul Schmitt, Kevin Borgolte, and Nick Feamster analyzed home-network measurements collected from April 7 to May 8, 2020, through the FCC’s Measuring Broadband America program. The paper reports 2,693 participating panelists in its abstract. Performance varied by client and resolver; some DoT resolvers had faster median response times than conventional DNS, and no single protocol or resolver was best for every client. The authors’ finding was that “clients do not have to trade DNS performance for privacy.” This is historical field evidence, not a current ranking or a test of the router behind the reported result. See the study.
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What you give up by disabling encryption
When DNS queries are sent without transport encryption, the connection between the device or router and resolver no longer has DoT or DoH’s protection against on-path observation and tampering. That is a change to DNS privacy and transport security, not a measure of broadband speed. RFC 7858 explains the protections DoT is designed to provide.
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DoT also has different failure modes depending on its configuration. Google Public DNS distinguishes strict DoT, which requires a secure connection and provides no DNS service if one cannot be established, from opportunistic DoT, which does not authenticate the server and therefore does not protect against active attackers. Disabling encryption removes the encrypted transport; the precise behavior depends on the router’s setting and DNS profile. Google explains the distinction in its DoT documentation.
How to check whether the change actually helped
- Identify the setting and baseline. Record the router model and firmware, whether the setting controls DoT or DoH, and the resolver used before the change. Note the date and test window.
- Change one variable. Compare the encrypted and unencrypted configurations on the same client network, using the same test domains and resolver where the router permits it. If the resolver also changes, the result cannot isolate encryption as the cause.
- Measure DNS responses repeatedly. Use a DNS measurement tool with a broad domain set and repeat the measurements in the same time window. Google recommends testing more than 5,000 domains for a meaningful comparison; a single ping or traceroute does not measure DNS resolution performance. See its testing guidance.
- Separate cold and cached lookups. Record whether lookups are fresh or served from a cache, since cached results do not measure the same path as a new query. Report DNS response-time changes as DNS results, not as broadband throughput.
- Test throughput separately. If the claim is that download or upload capacity improved, measure those speeds independently with repeated tests under comparable conditions. Do not infer a capacity increase from faster page starts or DNS responses.
For a result others can assess, report the router and firmware, protocol, resolver, measurement tool and domain set, repeat count, and whether results were cold or cached. The reported observation includes none of those details, so its specific cause and size cannot be independently verified.
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How to choose between the settings
- Keep encryption enabled if protecting DNS queries in transit is important and measured performance is acceptable.
- Investigate the resolver or router configuration if lookups seem slow. Resolver performance varies by network, and changing encryption alone does not establish that encryption was the bottleneck.
- Consider disabling it only as a measured trade-off. Compare DNS response times on the actual network and weigh any improvement against the loss of encrypted transport privacy.
RFC 7858 was published in May 2016; it explains DoT’s design and setup costs, not the speed of a particular router. The home-network study used measurements from 2020 and was revised in 2021, so it supports the point that results vary, not a present-day resolver recommendation.
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