Google Public DNS service
Dec 17, 2010 (about 1 year ago)
Earlier tonight, my ISP’s DNS died. I am not sure why it died as my ISP does not seem to make public any system status reports. I figure this is because they are really a mobile phone service provider and mobile internet access is not their core business.
Anyhow, I could connect to my ISP without any trouble and I could see that my system was being issued with an IP address, but I could not browse the web or doing anything that required the use of DNS. I was about to give up for the night, but then I remembered reading about the Google Public DNS and I decided to give it a try.
Luckily, I had the IP address of one of the CrunchBang servers, so I started an SSH session and installed ELinks on the server. I then browsed to the Google Public DNS site and made a mental note of the DNS IP addresses, which was easy due them being 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4. I then closed the SSH session and disconnected from my poorly ISP, before modifying my dongle’s connection settings via Network Manager to point to Google’s DNS servers and reconnecting to my ISP.
This is the first time I have tried Google’s DNS service. I have no real metrics to compare, but browsing the web does feel snappier. I think I will continue to use the service for a while and see if I notice any difference in the long-term.
6 responses to “Google Public DNS service”
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Dec 18, 2010 (about 1 year ago)
There’s a utility called Namebench ( http://code.google.com/p/namebench/ ) which will check all the DNS services you have access to and choose the best ones. It’s on Google but I don’t think it’s biased towards the Google DNS servers. Having run it and followed its advice more or less, it seems to me that the time when Firefox is showing “looking up somedomain…” has been cut down a lot compared with my ISP’s DNS servers.
Dec 18, 2010 (about 1 year ago)
^ excellent find, I will give it a try. Thank you for sharing! :)
Apr 28, 2011 (about 1 year ago)
Similar issues with my ISP here — I’d love to use Google DNS but #! keeps automatically overwriting any changes I make to /etc/resolv.conf
Still looking for a solution. How’s Google DNS treating you these days?
Apr 28, 2011 (about 1 year ago)
@drew, I have been using it for about 4 months now and it has been working well.
Regarding the changes not sticking in
/etc/resolv.conf, are you editing the file manually? I have been using the network manager GUI and it works fine.Apr 29, 2011 (about 1 year ago)
wow, thanks… i was editing the file manually, and overly confusing myself by reading way too many forum posts on the matter.
all i needed to do for the changes to stick was to choose Automatic (DHCP) Addresses Only and add the Google DNS servers. wow, i feel sheepish.
thanks for the response!
Apr 29, 2011 (about 1 year ago)
@drew, I am glad you got it sorted! :)