DNS Services

damo24

I have been thinking about changing my DNS server and have read some good reports about Google's server with many people reporting speed increases as well as the security benefits.

I have no need for blocking sites etc so the services offered by OpenDNS are not needed.

Does anyone have any opinions or experience of using Google (or any other) DNS services.

enor

I've used Googles for a while now. I haven't really noticed much difference in speed though I get a very poor service here anyway. Possibly though, the speed may be bit more consitant but it may be my imagination.

closed

What's wrong with the existing one, even if another one is faster, it's milliseconds.

kwikbreaks

Run this and it will tell you what the fastest DNS servers are for you and compare the speed with those you are using (presumably your ISPs)

http://code.google.com/p/namebench/

Normally for me it shows the Google public DNS as best. They also offer me the advantage of very east to remember IPs

GeoffX

Namebench seems to be a copy of Gibson Research's DNS Benchmark.
http://www.grc.com/dns/benchmark.htm

kwikbreaks

GeoffX wrote: »

Namebench seems to be a copy of Gibson Research's DNS Benchmark.

Or vice-versa.
Or neither.
They are just two different tools which do the same job.

ivavoucher

Why do you need to use DNS are they not provided by your ISP?

kwikbreaks

ISP provided DNS is often slow and unreliable.

ehlo

kwikbreaks wrote: »

ISP provided DNS is often slow and unreliable.

It certainly is. BTs is shocking

When I ran Windows I used to run Treewalk which is your own local DNS server

weegie.geek

Interestingly, that tool advised me to use two of BT's DNS since they were faster than my ISP's ones.

Pity that Amazon stopped resolving, along with a couple of other sites.

Back to one of my ISP's, and one of Google's... I'll just have to suffer that agonising 15ms delay.

Mr_Oink

The only (bad) experience I've had with Google / OpenDNS relate to soho/corporate customers trying to run mail servers. Anti spam blocklists like Spamhaus refuse to play with large scale name servers (google in particular) effectively stopping block list filtering from working. I can't say if this has any effect on consumer anti-spam suites that may find their way onto a Windows desktop, but it's worth mentioning for the archives.