Internet connections have trouble "grabbing on": is this a DNS issue?

Setup: late 2009 iMac, Mountain Lion 10.8.3, using Wifi through an Airport Extreme. A Windows laptop, two iPhones, and an iPad all use the Wifi with no problems at all.
On the iMac: I suspect it's a DNS issue, although I don't know how to confirm that for all the issues. Often, in Safari, the blue bar will progress a bit and get nowhere - maybe a few minutes later the site will appear. Repeatedly hitting refresh seems to be a faster way of reaching the site. Chrome often tells me "DNS lookup failed": once again, refreshing several times will usually get me to the site.
The issue comes and goes, and has been doing so for the past few weeks I think. It's not as if I've lost the internet connection - I always get the connection, but sometimes it takes a while. It doesn't seem to be time-based: one minute fine, next minute a problem, next minute fine.
I live in Taiwan: this issue MAY be less serious with Taiwanese websites (just now I opened a .tw site instantly, while bbc.co.uk is hanging), but it seems to happen with everything.
But the problems aren't just in browsers: in iTunes, when refreshing podcasts, the behavior is similar: the little rotating arrows can keep going forever, as if no connection is being made at that particular moment. Ditto when downloading a podcast: it sits at nothing downloaded, often until I hit pause and resume a few times, at which point it downloads with good speed. Similar when refreshing NetNewsWire, and Twitter, and Mail. Do DNS issues also happen with iTunes and RSS? (Sorry if that's a dumb question - I'm way out of my depth here, and hadn't even heard of DNS until a couple of days ago.)
Results from Speedtest.net are consistently good (download in the range of 40 Mbps, upload in the range of 10 Mbps, ping 7ms) - once I can actually get to the website, which as with all other websites, can sometimes involve repeated hangs and hits of refresh/reload. Note that there has never been a hang when actually trying to test with Speedtest (just when getting to the site): that points to DNS issues as well, right?
The Wifi bar indicator at the top of the screen is always at full strength.
I've tried things mentioned in different threads here, and also at this page...
http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/26616/dns-not-resolving-on-mac-os
... but so far nothing seems to help.
Can anyone advise on what the problem actually is, and how I can go about fixing it? Thanks in advance!

Hmm. Maybe this has been resolved now - thanks!
First step: I checked the Network / Wifi Advanced / DNS, and found two DNS servers listed: I just reversed the order of the two, and after clicking "Apply", nothing changed. Still the same issue.
Second step: looked on the iPad, Settings / Wi-Fi, and found the DNS listed there: and then I added that same number (10.0.1.1 - the iPhone has the same DNS) to the DNS server list on my iMac, at the top of the list. For the moment, everything is working very well, including far faster iTunes Podcast Refresh than I've seen in ages.
I'll check back in later to confirm the problem has indeed gone away, and I'm not just having a good ten minutes.
Where would those DNS Servers have come from? Does my ISP somehow automatically install them, or did I type them in back in the mists of time?

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Internet connections have trouble "grabbing on": is this a DNS issue?

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