Ditching the default DNS service can boost performance, reliability and security. Any attentive business or home user will quickly change their internet service provider if availability is not up to scratch and yet few realise they can do exactly the same thing with the 'name servers' resolving the global Domain Name System. Doing this costs nothing and the benefits in terms of improved performance and security can be significant, yet few bother. Most users continue to take Domain Name System (DNS) for granted, unaware of the hidden bottlenecks of internet service provider (ISP) services and the potential for improvement.
How does a DNS service work? Put very simply, the job of DNS name servers is to resolve public web addresses or domains to their underlying TCP/IP addresses. This sounds like a straightforward process but there are a number of variables that affect performance. The most obvious of these is simply the round-trip time between the client device and the DNS server itself, which will depend on geographical proximity as well as response times from any other DNS infrastructure involved in a query. Even meaty name servers will not cache every possible website domain and have to look that up recursively by sending a query to a remote server. This is why visits to websites in remote countries sometimes take perceptibly longer for reasons that aren't (as many assume) to do with a slow web server on the other end of the request. Another problem is that DNS name servers can become congested due to heavy use at peak times or malicious DDoS attacks causing problems behind the scenes. DNS was designed to be resilient but under stress, it will still slow. ...read more on our Forum