Wednesday, February 3, 2010

New DNS Speed Test Tool in NetScanTools Pro 10.95


Our good friend Phil at Ford asked us if we could provide a tool that accepted a list of DNS IPs, then test each DNS to find out how fast it could resolve a hostname or an IP address. We did it.

You can find the DNS List Speed Test tool on the DNS Tools - Advanced toolset page. Using it is pretty simple, first create a list of DNS IPv4 Addresses (hostnames can also be used but are discouraged) and save it to a text file. The list should be one IP address per line. Notepad works well for this. Then put in a hostname or an IP in the entry area, and press the DNS List Speed Test button. A File Open navigation window will open, locate and open the text file you just created. The tool will take it from there.

The output area tells you the IP of each DNS being tested, the DNS server reply code, whether or not the DNS can do recursion, and the A or PTR record that matched the input (if available). Sometimes you will see other DNS records like NS decoded if the DNS sent them to you. It also tells you the Server Response Time which is really what you are after. You can see just how fast each DNS server is with this tool.

DNS response time (latency) is most interesting part of the results and the purpose of the tool.. The DNS response time is calculated from the moment we send the packet to the moment a response is received. DNS managers like Phil who manage hundreds of DNS's can see which DNS's are having troubles by quickly looking at the response content and the DNS response time.

You can see the results in the image above.

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