DNS Benchmark

American Zombie

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I have been wondering what are REALLY the fastest DNS servers since many people talk about OpenDNS are the best. I found a utility that benchmarks DNS servers and as you can see there are four servers faster then my ISP (Comcast) and eight DNS servers (including my ISP's) that are faster then OpenDNS.
I am going to try those servers rated as the fastest to see if it does make a difference.

You can get the benchmark utility ---> GRC's|DNS Nameserver Performance Benchmark

Just found another that searches for the best dns servers that apply to you. This one is kinda buggy to me though. http://code.google.com/p/namebench/
 

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That is pretty cool. I am surprised that they don't have a pitch for Zone Alarm on there.
 
I just ran the test five times. And all five times it gave different results. So I guess it just depends on the traffic flow ....
 
i will have to look at that when i am next on the pc :)
 
I just ran the test five times. And all five times it gave different results. So I guess it just depends on the traffic flow ....

Not sure what is going on there.
I ran the test 5 times and every time the results came out in the exact order as the picture.
 
I only ran each utility once, and not close to the same time as each other, and the results are interesting, but GRC's|DNS Nameserver Performance Benchmark came up with a result where my default DNS's are not the fastest and namebench - Project Hosting on Google Code came up that my default DNS's are the fastest. :p

This is a good example of where I find it frustrating to tweak things because there's always someone who says a different or the "other" way is better.
 
The thing with Steve Gibson, though, is that I have a hard believing everything he says.
 
he has been right about many things though, bet your the type of person that believes everything Paul Thurrott says ;)

Its only advise you don't have to take what any of his programs say if you don't want to, it may be right, it may be wrong, time will tell :)
 
he has been right about many things though, bet your the type of person that believes everything Paul Thurrott says ;)

Its only advise you don't have to take what any of his programs say if you don't want to, it may be right, it may be wrong, time will tell :)

if you look at some of it, it is snake oil salesman tactics.
 
he has been right about many things though, bet your the type of person that believes everything Paul Thurrott says ;)

Its only advise you don't have to take what any of his programs say if you don't want to, it may be right, it may be wrong, time will tell :)
yep,yep, i do agree with you ,time will tell:)
 
if you look at some of it, it is snake oil salesman tactics.

As is with most tweaks, tips, and programs to tweak your system, yet people still buy them, if he stuff was crap i think is ass would have been dragged over the coals long ago ;)
 
Here is a quick script I wrote, it tests all the different DNS servers 10 times for the same domain name, then outputs it to the terminal lowest to high. Take from this what you want.

Code:
for ip in 8.8.8.8 8.8.4.4 4.2.2.1 4.2.2.1 208.67.222.222 208.67.220.220 10.10.10.11; do echo ${ip}: $(for i in `jot 10 1 10`; do dig @${ip} usingnamespace.com | grep "Query"; done | awk '{ print $4 }' | sort )ms; done

Code:
8.8.8.8: 52 52 52 53 53 54 55 56 64 103ms
8.8.4.4: 57 57 58 58 58 60 62 62 81 99ms
4.2.2.1: 20 22 22 22 22 23 24 24 24 25ms
4.2.2.1: 20 20 21 21 22 22 23 26 36 79ms
208.67.222.222: 37 38 38 38 39 39 40 41 45 67ms
208.67.220.220: 37 37 37 38 39 41 41 41 42 77ms
10.10.10.11: 17 17 18 18 18 18 18 19 20 22ms

The last IP address on that list is my local resolver (dnscache from djbdns), the next fastest is Level 3's DNS servers in 4.2.2.{1,2,3,4} and then OpenDNS, and in last is Google's new DNS service.
 
System is using one or more Level 3 nameservers.
Just a note: During the development testing of this benchmark, many of our testers who had been using Level 3's nameservers (4.2.2.1 through 4.2.2.6) discovered that they were less reliable - especially over the weekends - than they previously knew. As a result, they demoted those nameservers in their system's nameserver list so that they were used only as last resort backups.

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Since you are using Level 3's servers in some capacity, you might want to keep a close watch on them for a while by running this benchmark from time to time - especially over the weekends - to check their performance and reliability and verify that you're happy with the role they are playing for you.

Anyone who is using Level 3 ever experience this?
 
after more tests its saying that google is best for me followed by my isps own dns server ;) (thats the open source one).

So gibsons says level 3 is best, open source one says level 3 is worst for me.........
 
after more tests its saying that google is best for me followed by my isps own dns server ;) (thats the open source one).

So gibsons says level 3 is best, open source one says level 3 is worst for me.........

The open source one tests servers from your index.dat files cache from what I observed. At first it listed 184 servers from IE but after I deleted the index.dat files there were 0 servers to test from IE and only the Alexa top 10000 were available.
 
The open source one cant make its mind up, near every time i ran it, it gave me a different "best" server, with grc's it was consistently give me the same result, which was my 2 isp's dns servers and 2 of level 3's servers.

Will test it out tomorrow during the day and see what it says, i can see why you say the open source one is buggy, i wouldn't have thought the results would have changed never every time it was ran
 
The Gibson shows what DNS server is fastest for you at the time (it can change with traffic). The server(s) that are closest to you are probably going to be faster for you. I also like that the Gibson test shows you what DNS servers are returning their own 404 pages (aka ads for missing domains).

I also wonder what it said under "conclusions" for you? Usually if the top DNS just barely beats your current one it suggests to just keep it how you got it. :)

*edit* - I also found the router crashing to be interesting, anyone running a router should check that their router isn't on the list and then check and see if the tests makes it crash. A crash = bad and possible that someone could someday take over your router via remote code exploit.
 
i tried gibsons test out at varying times during the day, top five were always the same, sometimes in a different order, the open source one was wild in its pickings, i have gone for my own isp's dns and 2 from level 3
 

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