Could you benefit from switching DNS Server?

A DNS (Domain Name System) server is used to lookup the address you type into the address bar and link it to an IP address of a system. The speeds at which the pages are delivered to you from different servers are varied. According the the namebench tool I could gain 34% by switching to google’s 8.8.4.4 DNS server.

Here is a quick guide to finding out on a Ubuntu system.

Open a Terminal session
$ sudo apt-get install namebench

$ namebench

Start the benchmark with the default settings. When it is complete it will display a web page with your results.

Choose the best DNS servers to add to your resolv.conf file

$ sudo nano /etc/resolv.conf

Add additional entries before the default 127.0.0.1 like:
nameserver 8.8.4.4

save this file and test with commands like:
$ ping google.com
$ dig google.com
$ nslookup google.com

If everything works … Great! You are done, go ahead and browse the Internet, see if it makes any difference.