A DNS server has a job of translating domain names (such as google.com) to IP address (such as 209.85.135.103) and this can be done to all the new sites which are visited by you in your browser. Therefore the loading of your site doesn’t depend on how fast the speed of your Internet connection is, it will not load unless the lookup has not been performed by the DNS server properly.
When you have to choose a DNS server, there are several choices with you. Public DNS service such as Google DNS and OpenDNS are available or DNS server according to your ISP can be used. In order to look for your current DNS server, you need to type – ‘ipconfig /all’ at command prompt and then entry of “DNS server” has to be looked for under the Ethernet adapter.
The speed of resolving of a domain name into IP address by a DNS server is dependent on the geographical location along with other factors. Therefore, if we give an example, OpenDNS might perform faster as a DNS server in location of a user but for another use in some other location Google DNS might appear a better option. The same explanation is applicable in the case of ISP’s DNS Server performing faster in certain cases.
If you want to find out about which DNS Server will work faster on your computer, a free utility is there – DNS Benchmark, this is going to help you. All the popular DNS Service’s speed will be tested by this one, which includes Google DNS and OpenDNS. It will use your computer for testing the speed and then they will be arranged in the order of decreasing performance.
The average time taken by a DNS service for resolving the web domain names by into equivalent IP address is represented by the bars, so we can say the smaller the better. DNS Benchmark works only with windows but I case you have Linux or Mac, Namebench wil be the best option. There were certain issues why Namebench did not work with Windows 7.
Resolvers are offered by most DNS services at two IP addresses – for example, at 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 Google DNS is available and same order is followed for their usage in which they have been listed inside the settings of network.
The individual DNS server’s performance should therefore be looked at and the “Preferred DNS Server” has to be set to the one which has the lowest score. The servers may also be mixed – for example Google Public DNS can be used in the place of preferred DNS server and the OpenDNS in the form of an alternate DNS server.
The description for making changes on your computer in the DNS settings are given in the following video: