Member Avatar for slasherpunk

OpenDNS tracert results:

C:\>tracert -d

Tracing route to over a maximum of 30 hops

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms
2 36 ms 40 ms 39 ms
3 35 ms 35 ms 38 ms
4 41 ms 39 ms 41 ms
5 41 ms 42 ms 41 ms
6 65 ms 67 ms 64 ms
7 183 ms 185 ms 185 ms
8 221 ms 221 ms 221 ms
9 220 ms 221 ms 221 ms
10 240 ms 233 ms 233 ms
11 292 ms 293 ms 294 ms
12 300 ms 300 ms 301 ms
13 319 ms 317 ms 320 ms
14 318 ms 323 ms 309 ms

Trace complete.

========================================================================

Google DNS tracert results

C:\>tracert -d

Tracing route to over a maximum of 30 hops

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms
2 36 ms 39 ms 38 ms
3 37 ms 35 ms 36 ms
4 39 ms 39 ms 38 ms
5 39 ms 41 ms 58 ms
6 39 ms 49 ms 40 ms
7 41 ms 41 ms 44 ms
8 67 ms 65 ms 67 ms
9 105 ms 155 ms 104 ms
10 102 ms 103 ms 103 ms
11 103 ms 104 ms 107 ms
12 103 ms 103 ms 103 ms

Trace complete.

===========================================================================

Observer the time difference between the two. Does it indicate that Google DNS is faster?

By the way, I'm currently using OpenDNS on a Windows 7 PC with 3GB of RAM and a 3.99 GHz processor.

Thanks in advance.

  • 3 Contributors
  • 2 Replies
  • 430 Views
  • 2 Weeks Discussion Span
  • Latest Post Latest Post by wldake

Dani AI

Generated

Good observations so far. used traceroute to compare the two IPs, drew the obvious conclusion, and correctly noted that traceroute is the wrong tool for comparing DNS responsiveness. Traceroute shows path and how routers reply to TTL probes, not how fast a resolver answers DNS queries on port 53.

Why traceroute can be misleading: many resolvers use anycast so probes may hit different POPs; routers commonly deprioritize or rate‑limit ICMP/TTL replies; and traceroute measures per‑hop ICMP/UDP/TCP probe RTTs rather than the actual UDP/TCP DNS transaction. Caching, DNSSEC validation, TCP fallback on large responses, and provider features (NXDOMAIN redirection, filtering) also change apparent latency.

To measure fairly, test resolver query time directly and control for caching. Example workflow:

  • Flush the client cache (Windows: ipconfig /flushdns; Linux: restart the DNS cache service).
  • Force uncached lookups by querying random subdomains (eg. t<timestamp>.example.com) and record multiple samples.
  • Run repeated queries to each resolver and average results; do this at different times of day and from different devices/locations.
  • Example commands:
# Windows
ipconfig /flushdns
nslookup example.com 8.8.8.8
nslookup example.com 208.67.222.222

# Linux
sudo systemd-resolve --flush-caches
dig @8.8.8.8 example.com +stats
dig @208.67.222.222 example.com +stats

For broader automated testing try tools like namebench, GRC DNS Benchmark, or dnsperf.

Choose the resolver that gives the best average latency and stability for your network, not the one with a single faster traceroute. Also weigh features and privacy (filtering, logging, DNSSEC) — they matter in real use beyond raw RTT.

Recommended Answers

All 2 Replies

Member Avatar for jingda

Based on your results, Google DNS is faster than Open DNS. But the results may be different in other countries.

Member Avatar for wldake

Not really. Tracert shows the hop count from your network to the destination network. Just because the hop count is more/less or the MS response times are more/less may not make a difference.

What do you get when querying the servers themselves? What is the query time?

--# dig @208.67.222.222 +nocmd +nocomments +noquestion +noauthority +noadditional www.daniweb.com
www.daniweb.com.        6659    IN      A       74.53.219.188
;; [B]Query time: 21 msec[/B]
;; SERVER: 208.67.222.222#53(208.67.222.222)
;; WHEN: Wed Sep 21 16:36:31 2011
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 49
--# dig @8.8.8.8 +nocmd +nocomments +noquestion +noauthority +noadditional www.daniweb.com
www.daniweb.com.        31526   IN      A       74.53.219.188
;; [B]Query time: 26 msec[/B]
;; SERVER: 8.8.8.8#53(8.8.8.8)
;; WHEN: Wed Sep 21 16:36:37 2011
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 49
Be a part of the DaniWeb community

We're a friendly, industry-focused community of developers, IT pros, digital marketers, and technology enthusiasts meeting, networking, learning, and sharing knowledge.