Increase bsnl broadband speed using fastest dns

By | November 7, 2012

A simple trick to increase the speed of your bsnl broadband is to use the fastest dns server available. Now most articles and tutorials talk about using opendns. However opendns may not be the fastest dns server. The dns server's speed has to be found out by doing a simple ping test.

Lets say we have 3 dns servers to choose from

1) openDns - 208.67.222.222 , 208.67.220.220
2) google dns - 8.8.8.8 , 8.8.4.4
3) bsnl dns - 218.248.255.163

So lets find out their speed by pinging them. Open up the terminal/command prompt and type in the following command.

208.67.222.222

$ ping 208.67.222.222
PING 208.67.222.222 (208.67.222.222) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 208.67.222.222: icmp_req=1 ttl=52 time=362 ms
64 bytes from 208.67.222.222: icmp_req=3 ttl=52 time=362 ms
64 bytes from 208.67.222.222: icmp_req=4 ttl=52 time=362 ms
64 bytes from 208.67.222.222: icmp_req=5 ttl=52 time=362 ms

So the opendns server has a ping response time of 362ms. Ok, lets try the next one.

Google Dns server

$ ping 8.8.8.8
PING 8.8.8.8 (8.8.8.8) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_req=1 ttl=57 time=128 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_req=2 ttl=57 time=132 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_req=3 ttl=57 time=127 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_req=4 ttl=57 time=129 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_req=5 ttl=57 time=131 ms

Google dns server have a ping response time of around 130ms average. Now that is nearly 3 times faster than the open dns server. Many articles out there talk about using opendns for improving dns speed, but first the speed has to be tested, since opendns may not always be the fastest one.

My isp dns - 218.248.255.163

$ ping 218.248.255.163
PING 218.248.255.163 (218.248.255.163) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 218.248.255.163: icmp_req=1 ttl=251 time=6.30 ms
64 bytes from 218.248.255.163: icmp_req=2 ttl=251 time=6.16 ms
64 bytes from 218.248.255.163: icmp_req=3 ttl=251 time=6.01 ms
64 bytes from 218.248.255.163: icmp_req=4 ttl=251 time=6.45 ms
64 bytes from 218.248.255.163: icmp_req=5 ttl=251 time=6.25 ms

Bsnl dns server has a ping response time of around 6.5ms. This is the fastest so far and around 20 times faster than even google dns. This is because this dns server is located very near (may be in same city) to my internet connection.

So the results show that using the bsnl server is faster in this case. However there might be other cases when bsnl dns servers are not as fast. Then the next option should be google dns server.

And for the rest, to increase your speed even more change to a higher speed plan.

About Silver Moon

A Tech Enthusiast, Blogger, Linux Fan and a Software Developer. Writes about Computer hardware, Linux and Open Source software and coding in Python, Php and Javascript. He can be reached at [email protected].

14 Comments

Increase bsnl broadband speed using fastest dns
  1. binarytides

    Interesting thought, tested for my own experience and I find that OpenDNS and Google offer much the same performance when tested using ping. However the one thing I can not test is the actualy turn-around of the server actually translating the hostname to the IP address.

  2. Eggy Car

    The results show that using the BSNL server is faster in this case. However, there may be other instances where BSL DNS servers are not as fast. Then the next option should be the Google DNS server.

  3. narender chaudhry

    guys use a dns jumper it will take care of rest, no need to puzzle around, by the way gr8 post to learn keep up good work

  4. Chris

    An article on changing your DNS servers without a mention of Namebench? Do some more research next time.

    From their google code page:

    “Are you a power-user with 5 minutes to spare? Do you want a faster internet experience?

    Try out namebench. It hunts down the fastest DNS servers available for your computer to use. namebench runs a fair and thorough benchmark using your web browser history, tcpdump output, or standardized datasets in order to provide an individualized recommendation. namebench is completely free and does not modify your system in any way. This project began as a 20% project at Google.

    namebench runs on Mac OS X, Windows, and UNIX, and is available with a graphical user interface as well as a command-line interface.”

    http://code.google.com/p/namebench/

  5. Skip

    But how do you know that the ping times will remain constant (or even proportional) over time? How much will they vary over the day, or over weeks to months, with load? And how stable is the infrastructure that gives rise to these numbers (i.e., how often are servers moved, networks re-routed, etc)?

    Sorry if these are naive questions – I’ve been out of the network game for a *very* long time!

  6. Robert

    Interesting thought, tested for my own experience and I find that OpenDNS and Google offer much the same performance when tested using ping. However the one thing I can not test is the actualy turn-around of the server actually translating the hostname to the IP address.

    Off the top of my head I’m not sure of an easy way to messure nslookup results, prehaps this would have to be done using packet capturing (some python code you previously posted might be handy for this).

    Really enjoy your blog, am learning Python at the moment and although not experienced in the subject do enjoy security/networking subject, and your blog is helping me gather new perspectives and learning new ideas. Thanks.

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