DNS benchmarking

If you know how the Internet works, then you know how vital DNS servers are. Basically they convert human-readable names like "www.google.com" into addresses like "74.125.47.104." Loading an average webpage results in multiple DNS queries. So a slow DNS server means slower page loads, fast DNS equals faster Internet.

I just discovered two completely free DNS benchmarking utilities. They both do the same job and both do it will, so I'll mention them both here and let you decide which to run (or do as I did and run both). Both programs require a list of DNS servers to test, and both of them get this list from the same locations. 1) A built-in list of public DNS servers, 2) your computer's configured DNS servers (most likely assigned automatically to you by your ISP via DHCP), and 3) allow you to manually input additional DNS servers.

DNS Benchmark by GRC
GRC has made a lot of great free utilities over the years, and this one is no exception. I think everything this guy does is 100% hand-written assembly which is impressive. This also means the programs are small, fast, and simple (all good qualities).

Namebench by Goolge
Namebench is a program that came out of Google's "20% project." All developers at Google can use 20% of their time to work on personal projects. This is one of those projects. Namebench runs more tests than DNSBench which can be good, but it also takes longer.

Both of these are great programs and if you know what DNS servers are and how they work, I encourage you to give them a try. If you don't know what a DNS server is then don't bother, you're more likely to mess up your Internet connection then improve your speed.