Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Why do these things excite me so much?

There are a few factors the can really influence the performance of your internet browsing experience. Some of them we can’t influence, like those porn torrents, yeah no one can stop them. I know they’re not yours! It’s all for someone else, your roommate/brother/niece/cat is really into this or particular kind of rare German stuff. And hey!? It’s all good right? Of course it is, but whatever happens no one can mess with the porn torrents!

But the good news is there are some factors that you can control. I’m talking about DNS.

We all know a DNS lookup occurs every time we do pretty much anything online. (Yes that’s an over-simplification but just go with it… it’ll be worth it ;) So it makes sense that if we can improve the performance of our DNS we’ll improve the overall web browsing experience.

That’s where Name Bench comes in. http://code.google.com/p/namebench/

It’s pretty cool. It benchmarks your DNS! Give it a crack and see if it suggests a different DNS server. If it doesn’t at least you’ll know you’re already getting the fastest possible name resolution AND get some interesting info to boot!

I know I was surprised when I was advised that TPG’s DNS servers were 26% faster than my own ISPs. Yup I was surprised BUT I did change my DHCP settings to give these new servers a crack. Didn’t really notice a difference, but at least I KNOW I’ve spent some time optimising my DNS resolutions.

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