Anybody using DNSBench?

[blackice]

Hey I was wondering if anybody is using DNSBench, is it worth messing with? Does anybody find it useful these days? Gibson released a new version a couple months ago. It still has a ton of hits on VT, guessing those are heuristic FPs.

 

[Pat MacKnife]

I use this sometimes, but if i want to download this new version my AV and extensions block it.

 

[blackice]

I use this sometimes, but if i want to download this new version my AV and extensions block it.

Yeah Windows Defender Browser Protection blocks it. Funny enough Edge with smartscreen doesn’t.

 

[TairikuOkami]

It does not work for me, I use Google Code Archive - Long-term storage for Google Code Project Hosting.

 

[DeepWeb]

Yes. I will save you the energy and time and say Cloudflare DNS (1.1.1.1, 1.0.0.1) is easily the best 3rd party DNS other than your ISP's DNS and having a local resolver. I have no idea what type of voodoo they are using but Cloudflare appears to ping their closest CDNs and those are extremely fast and consistent in their response time.

 

[blackice]

Yes. I will save you the energy and time and say Cloudflare DNS (1.1.1.1, 1.0.0.1) is easily the best 3rd party DNS other than your ISP's DNS and having a local resolver. I have no idea what type of voodoo they are using but Cloudflare appears to ping their closest CDNs and those are extremely fast and consistent in their response time.

Currently I’m using DoT with cloudflare. So that helps a lot, thank you.

 

[Burrito]

It's been a long time since I tried DNS Bench.

When I did try it, I preferred DNS Jumper.

It's been a long time since I tried DNS Bench.
When I did try it, I preferred DNS Jumper.

I just ran that test.... and I see that Norton Connectsafe is on there...I thought they got out of the DNS business..

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And, Cylance will flag on DNS Jumper. You have to rescue it from quarantine.

 

[DeepWeb]

@Burrito I have a local resolver and used to have Hurricane Electric, Sprintlink, Level3, Neustar, Google DNS and Norton ConnectSafe. I tried them all for weeks. I was obsessed trying to find the best among them. I have to vouch for Cloudflare. It is the only one that will give you a consistently low result. The others will occasionally have a faster 1st result, but Cloudflare is fast if you look up a familiar domain or a foreign domain and the latter is really what makes the difference. If you ever travel to a site that people don't usually visit, it resolves probably 10x faster than the others including Google. The only exception I would say is Hurricane Electric because they have a fascinating IPv6 backbone and a massive database. But they rely solely on their system. I have been in situations where websites wouldn't resolve because Hurricane Electric didn't have the domain and IP... And I don't know what they are doing with my DNS queries. Sprintlink and Google DNS are phony about their privacy policy too. So it really only leaves Cloudflare. Also remember that good DNS servers will actually give second priority to pings and first priority to queries. They will also delay packages if you spam them with queries from your IP. Real world experience, I have to give it to Cloudflare because of their reliability and consistent performance. Also don't bother with OpenNIC. Most unreliable DNS servers in the universe.

 

[Burrito]

@Burrito .... Also remember that good DNS servers will actually give second priority to pings and first priority to queries. They will also delay packages if you spam them with queries from your IP. Real world experience, I have to give it to Cloudflare because of their reliability and consistent performance. Also don't bother with OpenNIC. Most unreliable DNS servers in the universe.

I actually didn't know that the DNS servers differentiated between pings and queries. That does possibly change how one can look at tests like the one I just posted.

And thanks for your discussion of good DNS servers. I've been using Neustar based on @Evjl's Rain testing, but do travel quite a bit and I'll take another look at Cloudflare.

I just ran a test again...

Yep, Cloudflare looks good.

 

[DeepWeb]

@Burrito Yes. It's also the reason why your ISP DNS scores so low probably. ISPs have optimized their DNS servers to prioritize queries over ping. But they are actually the fastest DNS servers if it wasn't for their privacy issues. In DNS Bench I rank servers by uncached and Dotcom lookups because they represent how fast the servers can find something that is not in their records and for me, that is where the big difference is. Cloudfare puts all of them to shame including ISP DNS.