You are no longer restricted with your own ISP’s DNS servers. Now you have Google public DNS, OpenDNS, UltraDNS and many others. The question is which one of them will work the fastest for you? Somebody has created a tiny app to determine the fastest working DNS server for you. Here is how you can find the fastest DNS server :
- Visit http://code.google.com/p/namebench/.
- Download the appropriate file for your operating system from the right side list. Windows users would have to download namebench-1.2-Windows.exe and the Macintosh users would have to download the namebench-1.2-Mac_OS_X.dmg file.
- Run the downloaded file. Click on Extract. After the extraction, it runs without installing. You will see a window like this :
- It will show your current DNS servers in the top tetx box. You may want to change the number of queries to less than 100 if you do not have a fast internet connnection. Finally, click on the Start Benchmark.
- After about 5 to 10 minutes, it will finish its becnhmark and show you a report.
The report shows the fastest DNS server on top-left. You see recommended primary and secondary DNS servers on the top-right.
If you are wondering what difference does it make, its only faster for a few microseconds, then check yourself. A faster DNS server can make your browsing experiecing very enjoyable as the sites open very fast.
Here is how you can change the DNS servers in Windows Vista and Windows 7 : https://www.trishtech.com/internet/google_dns_servers_for_faster_browsing.php. The article is for Google public DNS servers but the mentioned method applies for all DNS servers.