Google Public DNS

[webman]

That's right. Look at the source of a busy page and odds-on you'll find a off-domain items being read from all over the place.

Indeed. I've lost track of the amount of time spent using Firebug/LiveHTTPHeaders to find out what is stopping a video from being played on a website - or in particular, what our two web filtering systems are blocking access to. This is usually a javascript or Flash file, or combination of both.

[theriver]

A ping only shows you a bit of the story - the network response from the DNS server, nothing more.

Indeed.

The result was printed purely in response to the comment that querying your ISP's DNS server should be quicker than querying Google's.

[AngryTechnician]

How long before they try to be OpenDNS?

I have a better question - how long before this gets offered as default option when installing other Google software (just like they do with Google Toolbar) and we suddenly have to fix dozens of machines where the user didn't read or understand what they were agreeing to?

[Jamman960]

I guess its a bit early to say how fast the service is going to be, no doubt the system has ooodles of free resources and bandwidth availible at the moment in anticipation of a high rise in usage... once everyone and their dog are using this "faster" service the ISP based DNS servers will have the excess resources

[localzuk]

I really don't understand the fuss - DNS resolution is a tiny part of the process of getting a webpage. You're talking about a few bytes of data, so millisecond responses from the servers. Compared to potentially hundreds of kb of html and multimedia data for the actual page.

[stratisphere]

i'm guessing it's the initial wait for DNS. Alot of browsers while waiting for DNS do sod all and even less to notify you about what it's doing.

Sure sometimes the initial DNS lookup is a few ms, less when it's cached... but i've found sometimes the dns lookup phase can take a few seconds.

Oh and dont forget, dns is recursive, when you're doing a lookup to your ISP's server, if it doesnt have it, it then has to go out and find it from god knows how many servers.

Google has all the power and BW in the world and I have no doubt they have made alot of changes for that initial reply to be as quick as possible.

I'm using it. I noticed a slight improvement for most sites (yes, i did reset my dns cache first).

[Michael]

I've used OpenDNS for years and today I switch to Google DNS. To be honest I cannot notice any difference in speed, but I can imagine some will. I did notice a difference changing from Orange's DNS to OpenDNS.

I believe this is Google's first step into the DNS arena, as I seem to remember they were working on a new DNS type protocol which would speed things up even further. Naturally I suspect Google's own Chrome Browser will support it (in the future) with other browsers following if it proves a success.

[DaveP]

This was just posted on GoogleSystem.BlogSpot.COM

OpenDNS, a popular third-party DNS resolving service, offers more feature than Google Public DNS: web content filtering, stats, typo correction, shortcuts, but they're available if you create an account and enter personal information like your name and address. When you type an invalid URL, OpenDNS redirects you to its own search engine to show suggestions and ads. Other free DNS resolution services: Comodo Secure DNS, OpenNIC, DNS Advantage.

You can test all the services and decide which one works best for you by using GRC's Domain Name Speed Benchmark. Don't forget to add Google's memorable IPs: 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4.

Full blog entry: Google DNS

[fiendishlyclever]

I ran the DNS benchmark out of curiosity. I use OpenDNS for the functionality rather than speed, I'm not sure that I can see any noticable change of speed for any of the DNS servers I've tried.

[DaveP]

As a follow up to this post I downloaded and installed NameBench.

Link: Downloads - namebench - Project Hosting on Google Code

Here is the result of the test I performed on my laptop this afternoon:



I have since changed my DNS servers as suggested. I now want to see if this has improved the performance of my machine. 38% faster. Even if the improvement turns out to be something which is not noticeable having your machine do one of its tasks 38% faster than it did before has got to be better.

Hasn't it?

[pooley]

Just an update to this thread, I have been using Google DNS from home since the Public release before Christmas, at that time I noted a marked increase in browsing speed etc, but over the last 2 weeks or so I have noticed a big slowdown.
So today I went back to my ISP's dns servers and my speeds at home have increased greatly. Maybe too many users, maybe its just me. Time will tell.

S

[DaveP]

Click on ‘Fastest DNS’ and DNS Jumper will test dozens of servers and find the fastest combination. You can also choose from pre-sets for Google DNS, Open DNS, Comodo DNS, Ultra DNS and many more. This is a tiny app that will likely speed up your internet experience.

I haven't been able to try this yet as our Grid are blocking the download page.

I just thought that it might, occasionally, be useful to switch between differing DNS setups without having to go through the full process [network card/properties/...] each time.

I will try it at home later.

Link: DNS Jumper v1.0.3

[browolf]

ooh just discovered this.
At the moment I use opendns on TreeWalk DNS Home on my windowspc and bind on my linux pc.

Maybe it's just the routers I've owned...used to have to reboot them once a month or so. With router-dns turned off it's never!