Surfing faster via Google Public DNS?
You’re not obliged to use the DNS services offered by your Internet provider. You can also use a public service such as OpenDNS. Google is now also offering its own DNS service. Is it worth using?
What does a DNS server do?
As a reminder: a DNS server “translates” (resolves) the domain name of a website into an IP number. So you don’t need to type 74.125.79.106 in order to surf to Google, www.google.com will do. Conversion is done automatically and in the background by your Internet provider’s DNS servers.
Alternative DNS services
However, you’re not obliged to use your provider’s DNS servers. You can also configure an alternative such as OpenDNS (http://www.opendns.com) or the new Google Public DNS (http://code.google.com/speed/public-dns). In principle, conversion is faster as the DNS server is physically closer to your location. However, Google uses its own network of data centres plus a huge database (cache) of frequently used domain names which is constantly updated. In this way, Google DNS can often carry out the conversion faster than your own Internet provider.
How do you use Google DNS?
Google provides detailed instructions (http://code.google.com/speed/public-dns/docs/using.html) on how to adapt your computer’s network settings. Note. When your computer is part of a local (wireless) network, you will have to modify the DNS settings of your router, not your computer. Check the manual of your router to find out how to do this.
Safety first. At the office, it’s best to leave the DNS settings of your computer unchanged. In any case, write down your current DNS settings, so that you can restore them if something should go wrong with the new ones.
Which DNS service is fastest?
The question is of course whether it’s worthwhile using a public DNS service. Independent tests show that it does indeed produce a gain in speed. However, don’t raise your expectations too high: you will only gain a few dozen milliseconds per webpage. The same tests also show that Google Public DNS is slightly faster than OpenDNS. Conversely, the latter is more reliable and offers extra services such as anti-phishing.
Tip. To find out which DNS service is best for you, use the free Namebench (http://code.google.com/p/namebench). This tool checks your browser cache memory for the websites you’ve visited most often and tries to resolve these names via several DNS services, including your provider’s. Although Namebench is a Google service, Google DNS isn’t always the fastest service. An alternative benchmarking tool is Domain Name Speed Benchmark (http://www.grc.com/DNS/benchmark.htm).
And what about your privacy?
Google likes collecting information about its users, so that it can gear its ads to them. So you would be right to wonder whether your privacy is respected by Google Public DNS. According to Google (http://code.google.com/speed/public-dns/privacy.html), your IP number is stored for 48 hours at most, mainly to be able to trace any problems. After this period, IP information is no longer preserved individually, so it’s definitely not linked to your Google account. It’s only preserved at a global level to see which regions visit what type of site most frequently. Using this data, the DNS servers can be geared to the most popular sites.
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