
Verisign also provides its own public DNS server. Level 3’s DNS service may be very fast for some connections. Level 3 doesn’t publicly advertise its DNS service, but anyone can point their systems at Level 3’s DNS servers and use them. There’s also Level 3 DNS, run by Level 3, which provides backbone connections that link ISPs around the world. OpenDNS promises not to share your information with any outside parties. If OpenDNS is fast for you, you can use it with or without the filtering.
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So, although OpenDNS offers malware protection and other web filtering features, you can create a free account and customize the exact filtering that will take place for your connection. Google promises it won’t correlate any usage data with any personal information you’ve provided to other Google services. Google Public DNS was created by Google to provide a speedy, secure alternate DNS server. Some DNS servers don’t offer a lot of features, and just focus on providing fast, speedy, accurate results. It helps to know how comparatively fast the other options are.

We found that Comcast’s servers were the fastest ones for our Comcast connection, which isn’t surprising.Įven if your ISP’s servers are the fastest, however, you may still want to switch to another DNS server that provides malware filtering, parental controls, and other features. Once you have, click “Run Benchmark” to run the benchmark with your ISP’s DNS servers.

You can then type the address of the second DNS server and click “Add”, too. Type the IP address of the first DNS server and click “Add” to add it to the list. In DNS Benchmark, you can then click the Nameservers tab, click the “Add/Remove” button. Every router is a little different, but we found this under “Internet status” on our ASUS router. To test this, you need to sign into your router’s web interface and locate the addresses of your ISP’s DNS servers. However, your router will be using your ISP’s DNS servers by default, so this test didn’t actually benchmark how your ISP’s DNS servers compare to these third-party DNS servers. That’s because it’s physically present on our local network and can immediately return cached results it remembers. In the screenshot above, for example, it actually says our router-that’s the “Local Network Namesaver” is the fastest DNS server.

However, DNS Benchmark doesn’t test your ISP’s DNS servers. There’s a good chance your Internet service provider’s DNS servers may be the fastest for your connection, because they’re located physically near you. For the most accurate results possible, ensure the DNS Benchmark tool is the only thing using your internet connection during the tests (so turn off Netflix streaming, online games, or other downloads that might be using your internet).įor example, in the benchmark we ran on one connection, we saw that the fastest third-party DNS servers were OpenDNS, followed by UltraDNS, followed by Google Public DNS. After it’s done, it will even offer to benchmark nearly 5000 publicly available DNS servers in the world and find the best 50 for your connection.
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Just download DNS Benchmark, launch it (no installation required), select the “Nameservers” tab, and click “Run Benchmark”.
