Public DNS providers: Do they actually improve your experience?

by Dave Legg

Services such as OpenDNS, and Google's Public DNS have recently attracted a lot of attention due to their claims to speed up web browsing simply by changing the DNS servers your computer uses to resolve domain names into IP addresses. The basic idea behind the services is that many ISP's do not invest heavily in their own DNS infrastructure, which can result in slow response times, particularly at busy times of day. By creating a network of servers specifically to serve high levels of DNS traffic, these companies hope to improve the experience for end users, but is this the reality?

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Compared to a Thai ISP's DNS service?

Yes, naturally...

Not just the speed but also the quality (speed of dns updates for changed domain names, uptime avilability)

Depending on the quality of your ISP's DNS, the public DNS may speed up your browsing. This is being said based on my experimenting/speed testing of "my ISP's (TOT)" DNS against, the Google public DNS, OpenDNS, etc. I used two DNS benchmarking programs, DNSBench and NameBench. Each gave me the same basic results/recommendations.

End result TOT's DNS was the fastest followed by the Google Public DNS. OpenDNS was a distance third/slow since it's server seems to be located in the U.S., where TOT's DNS is in Thailand and Google's DNS was somewhere in Southeast Asia. And when it came to "reliability" of a DNS/web site lookup the results were basically the same/very minor differences.

I have setup my modem to use the TOT DNS as the primary DNS server and Google DNS as the secondary DNS server. That way, if the TOT DNS server goes down the Google DNS server is automatically used.

If on TOT be sure you are using their 203.113.5.130, 203.113.5.131, 203.113.5.132, or 203.113.5.133 DNS versus their 203.113.127.199 and 203.113.24.199 DNS like reflected in the Q&A on their support web site. The later two TOT DNS servers tested slow in comparison to other DNS servers. Now, of course you have to have a TOT internet package to use the TOT DNS....just like True internet users have access to True DNS servers but not TOT DNS (and vice-versa)....etc. Anyone can use the public DNS servers like Google, OpenDNS, etc.

I have seen "no significant" speed increase in downloads and speedtests after the initial connection to website XYZ; "however," the snappiness of my browsing is much faster (that is, how fast the web page is looked up on the DNS server and hooked up to web site XYZ) in much faster on the TOT 130 series DNS servers compared to the 199 series.....and the DNS connection is always there. You know, there is a lot of time spent just making that initial connection to website/webpage ABC, XYZ, etc., which is what the DNS is doing for you. When you are browsing a good DNS can easily speed up each webpage initial connection which makes the computer browsing faster and you spend a lot less time just waiting to connect to the page.

Summary: yeap, DNS can make a big difference in your computer browsing, making website/page connections, etc; but actually making your 4Mbps internet package (or whatever speed package you have) which may be running at only 1Mbps to international website magically turn into a speed demon and run at 2Mb, 3Mb, or 4Mb probably ain't going to happen. I read of some folks saying their download speed increased but I don't remember if they posted speedtest results to back it up...maybe they did...I just don't remember. Also, setting up a secondary DNS verus just totally relying on your ISP's DNS(s) gives you a backup DNS with another company.

Now if you happen to have a TOT internet package, b