WinGeek - Google Public DNS Makes the Web Slower

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Today Google announced a new public DNS service with the goal to make the web faster. Every time a domain is typed in a browser, such as wingeek.com, a DNS server must resolve the domain to an IP address so the computer can connect to the server. Google hopes to speed up the web by resolving domains faster than the DNS servers provided by a users ISP. The response time of the DNS server is critical because a single Web page can require a number of DNS resolutions which can slow down the loading of a Web page. Since there are already a few public DNS services that offer improved performance how does Google stack up? I put them to the test and the results are surprising.

To test the response time of Google's DNS servers I used a windows version of the classic *nix tool called dig to resolve domains 5 times and average the response time. I included the results of the same domains using OpenDNS and my ISP's DNS servers for comparison.

Google DNS (8.8.8.8) Speed Test

29.0 ms - Tweaks.com
29.4 ms - Wingeek.com
29.0 ms - Google.com
28.2 ms - Bing.com
29.0 ms - Yahoo.com

OpenDNS (208.67.222.222) Speed Test

17.4 ms - Tweaks.com
18.2 ms - Wingeek.com
18.6 ms - Google.com
16.6 ms - Bing.com
18.2 ms - Yahoo.com

My ISP DNS (68.87.72.130) Speed Test

17.4 ms - Tweaks.com
27.6 ms - Wingeek.com
17.0 ms - Google.com
17.4 ms - Bing.com
17.4 ms - Yahoo.com

The results show Google has some work to do. If I deployed Google DNS settings on my home network I would actually slow down the web. For now I suggest users avoid Google's public DNS servers until they improve the performance. Some degradation may be attributed to the flood of new users after the announcement today and the new servers may not yet be fully distributed geographically for best performance. If you are looking for better DNS server performance I suggest using OpenDNS.

Update: How is your expereince with Google Public DNS? Test your response time with dig and post your results in the comments below. Dig command line syntax: dig @dns_server Domain.com

Comments

random talk

your ISP DNS seems faster than open DNS or google DNS. In which case, I'm wondering what would be the use of changing the default ISP DNS.

96 days ago

Steve Sinchak

I was actually surprised the Comcast DNS servers performed so well. The problem is they are not always that good and often have issues. Others are not so lucky and their ISP DNS servers perform much worse.

95 days ago

anonymouz

Well the reason google DNS might have been slow is because it still hasn't been used as much as the other DNS servers, which affects the cache hit rate. Hopefully once it is being used at its full limit the results will turn up faster. Also google DNS to some extent solves the issue of DNS cache poisoning(a very big flaw) which all other DNS servers currently face.

95 days ago

Transcontinental

DNS resolving depends of the location as well as of the DNS resolver. My experience here in France at this time is as follows:
1- My ISP's DNS resolver, even of quality (Orange) is never the fastest;
2- OpenDNS is faster;
3- A French public DNS resolver called 'Oleane' (194.2.0.20 & 194.2.0.50) is faster than OpenDNS;
4- 'Google Public DNS' (GPDNS) is even faster than Oleane. In particular, having DNS prefetching ON (Firefox 3.5.5), GPDNS seems to take full advantage of this DNS prefetching: resolving is amazingly fast.

I've read many posts stating that GPDNS was particularly indicated for international (non domestic US) users. Have no idea how thinfs are rolling elsewhere, this is mmy experience here in France.

95 days ago

Transcontinental

Steve Sinchak is very Microsoft, letting his haste of Google lead him to nonsense.
Google Public DNS is very fast even if differences are also related to location. Steve's post here is either unaware or dishonest :)

94 days ago

Steve Sinchak

anonymouz, I took that into account by throwing out the first DNS response per domain from all the servers. Typically one request to the DNS server is all that is needed to fill the remote cache. For example, on the first request to 8.8.8.8 (Google DNS) for Tweaks.com the response was actually 98 ms and dropped to about 29 ms on the second test. OpenDNS also addresses the DNS cache poisoning issue (http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=1562).

Transcontinental, I explained how the test was performed, what tool I used and the results. How is that unaware or dishonest? Clearly location is critical to DNS response time and I addressed that in the final paragraph of the article.

94 days ago

Mark

DNS Advantage has always been the fastest for me.

94 days ago

Adam

You guys obviously do not understand how DNS works.

The original results the entire article is about is poisoned due to DNS caching.

Just pick one and use it, you're bickering about a TENTH of a second. I use 4.2.2 and now Google to get away from DNS poisoning. Much more important than my ISP's spoofed sites.

91 days ago

andyzweb

I think that Google's DNS servers aren't actually theirs. they are just running some special software on Level3's servers.

89 days ago

OpenDNS is NOT an option!

OpenDNS is NOT an option!...I wish people would STOP suggesting OpenDNS...they don't properly return a FAILED domain lookup, they just wanna make money off their "Guide", so f-u-c-k em...(yes, I know I can "register" to turn off the Guide...NO!...I won't)...

I support "Open" & Open Source projects, but not OpenDNS...

I tested Google's DNS for a little bit, when it came out, but concerned with them possibly profiling/tracking, I switched back...I wish Google would actually "do no evil" & remove the RLZ tracking from Chrome (I know Iron removes it)...I really like Google, but not their tracking c-r-a-p...so I don't know if I can trust them with DNS...

"There is a problem with the content of your article"...would the error msg mind telling me WHAT IS THE PROBLEM WITH IT?...or should I guess?

46 days ago

Krioeltje

For me, Google Public DNS is the fastest (lowest average latency, and lowest maximum latency). Last time I tested, 13% faster than the second-fastest.

I tested Google Public DNS the day after launch, as soon as I read enough about it to trust it. If they state black-on-white to never combine Public DNS user data with data from other Google services, it's true. A smart company about which whose co-founder, ex-CEO and current President of Technology (Sergey Brin) expresses his hope to exist "100-200 years from now" cannot/will not afford the risk of lying; I know them a little too well for that.

I benchmarked a set of global and local DNS providers, including my ISP's DNS (Scarlet), as soon as that [fellow Belgian] googler released Namebench (the Open-source DNS Benchmark Utility) on Google Code, I tried it and I found that in the beginning it was slower than UltraDNS and OpenDNS but faster than my ISP's, which only had the (logical) advantage of the lowest minimum latency. But since about 5 weeks, Google Public DNS is the fastest of all according to the tool, which uses your browser's recent history.

It's the newest so it obviously will still improve much more.
PS: Note that in the author of namebench's given example, Google Public DNS is not the fastest.

24 days ago

Maggy Rond

I have not downloaded dig, I don't see how it could be a useful test tool for this purpose without reconfiguring my ADSL modem to use a certain DNS. And that exactly is something I do not want to do. I've done so once, to get OpenDNS and once again to remove OpenDNS ASAP because it was much slower for me than my ISP DNS and caused a lot of other problems.
If ever I'd be switching DNS systems again, it would be after they convinced me of their quality.

21 days ago

Arun

Being in India My isp gave me better results than google and opendns. However while using google services like search,mail docs; google dns works much faster

19 days ago