Fastest DNS and Optimize Your Internet Speed

Fastest DNS and Optimize Your Internet Speed

Google recently started a new service called Google Public DNS to
help speed up your web browsing. This is an alternative to the DNS
provided by your ISP, and other public DNS services like Open DNS, that
we covered previously on MakeUseOf. Which of these options best optimize
your internet speed? The good news is that you can test this yourself,
and don’t need to be misled by anyone’s marketing pitch.

DNS: A Backgrounder

In simplified terms, Domain Name Servers (DNS) are translators that
convert website names to IP Addresses. When you click on a bookmark,
hyper-link, or enter an address like http://faisal3355.blogspot.com/
in your browser, the browser sends that name to a DNS Server that helps
route the request to the appropriate IP Address of that URL. Think of
this as your letter for “John Doe” being sent to his correct home
address.


When your ISP configures your Internet connection, it is set to use
the ISP’s DNS service. However, you are free to use other alternatives,
as Karl explained in Open
DNS Works Great As A Free Web Content Filtering Solution. Thus, you
can use Open DNS or the new Google Public DNS,
to replace your ISP’s DNS.


Why should you use something other than what your ISP gives you for
free? As you can see, Open DNS
offers rich content-filtering options for privacy and family safety.
Google Public DNS has been engineered by Google for faster performance
and better security. However, because of the complex variables involved,
no single option can be said to be the best for all when it comes to
speed. So how do you find out which DNS is the fastest for you? Enter NameBench, a free tool
to help you find the fastest DNS for you.

Introducing NameBench

NameBench is a
portable application (no installation!) that works across the Windows,
Mac, or Linux platforms. It runs a benchmark test on your computer,
using either your web browser’s history or a standardized test data set
to find out which DNS service returns the fastest results for your
location. Download and run the application from the Google Code
repository here.

Starting the NameBench Test

Before you run NameBench, make sure you have closed all applications
using the Internet. This will ensure that the results are not distorted
by interference from other programs using your network bandwidth. Then,
launch the application, and you will see a screen like this:





The Nameservers at the top shows the DNS servers you are currently
using. If you are not interested in technical details, simply click
“Start Benchmark”. The test takes between 10-20 minutes, so you can take
a coffee break while it runs.

NameBench Results

After the test is complete, your browser launches to show you the
results. At the very top are the main results (in this case, showing
that my ISP’s DNS is hopelessly slow):





At the right, you can see which DNS service works the fastest for
you. To change your DNS configuration, you can follow
the instructions at the Google Public DNS site, using the
recommended configuration from the test, instead of Google’s Public DNS.

NameBench Options Explained

NameBench includes public DNS providers like OpenDNS and UltraDNS in
its test via the first checkbox. The “Include best available
regional DNS services” option tests the health and response
time of over 1000 DNS servers worldwide so that it can include those
that are close to you and may be the fastest. Leave both options checked
for best results.


The “Benchmark Data Source” drop-down will give you
the option of choosing your browser history or a standardized data set
of the top 10,000 Internet websites. Many of those websites would be
foreign-language ones that you never visit, so keep the default option
and use your browser history for the test.


Using the “Benchmark Data Selection” mode, you can
choose a random or sequential set of websites from your browser history.
The default “Weighted” mode uses more of your recent
browser history and is the best option for most users. Finally, the
Number of tests represents how many requests will be sent to the
servers, and should be kept over 100, preferably 150-200. Running the
test more than once with “Number of runs” > 1, will
result in DNS caching being used for subsequent runs if you want to test
performance with and without caching.

NameBench Results In Detail

The Tested DNS Servers table shows a list of the DNS Servers that
were used for the test, with the corresponding response times, notes,
and errors if any. NameBench allows a maximum of 10 DNS servers at a
time.





This graph shows the average and fastest response times for the top 5
servers.





Finally, this pretty graph shows the percentage of times a response
was received from a server within the first 200 milliseconds.


Grab your free download of NameBench and run the
test. You may be surprised by the results! Did you change your DNS
servers after using it? Is your web browsing faster as a result? Tell us
in the comments!