note: this article is intended to open eyes regarding client-side DNS performance. As in making your web surfing experience faster, this has nothing to do with the performance of your website.

Using dig for windows, I asked 3 servers to return a record, in this case, cnn.com. Query all servers for the same record, so it's the same size result.

Level3 - 4.2.2.1, 4.2.2.2, 4.2.2.3, 4.2.2.4, 4.2.2.5

OpenDNS - 208.67.222.222, 208.67.220.220

Comcast - 68.87.85.98, 68.87.69.146

Comcast DNSSEC testing - 75.75.75.75 and 75.75.76.76

Qwest - 205.171.3.25, 205.171.2.25

Google Public DNS - 8.8.8.8, 8.8.4.4, 4.3.2.1

DNS Advantage (NeuStar) - 156.154.70.1 and 156.154.71.1

Example

C:\dig>dig cnn.com @4.2.2.1

The results will contain lots of stuff, look near the end of the record for this:

;; Query time: 10 msec

So run dig, and compare your results, and choose the option with the lowest query time. I like DNS. Is there any coincidence there are 13 root servers? ;)

Also, if names are not resolving the way you expect, check the cache of your provider.

Comcast DNS Cache Query