DNS Benchmark is a freeware, portable benchmarking utility to determine the exact performance of local and remote DNS nameservers.

DNS Benchmark is a freeware, portable benchmarking utility to determine the exact performance of local and remote DNS nameservers.

By design, DNS Benchmark is simple enough for anyone to use but advanced enough for the geek with a simple four tab layout. Let's take a look at just how simple, yet complex, DNS Benchmark can be.

The Introduction tab begins explaining a little bit about how the DNS system works and how it can affect your internet speeds. If you're just looking to learn and experiment with this portable app, we suggest you read the first three paragraphs here.

The NameServers tab is where the benchmarking happens. It also begins one of two areas where some people might initially find it overwhelming. But, no worries here. You can add or remove benchmarks here or do the best thing; just click "Run Benchmark" and see how the program works. Depending on your computer, it will most likely take a few minutes to run. You can stop it at any time, but there's no harm letting DNS Benchmark run entirely.

There are 72 nameservers set by default, and eventually, you'd be better off making a custom nameserver list. Have no fear, DNS Benchmark will offer to create for you a top 50 custom list, as seen in the third screenshot below. Building this list will take some time, and as always your mileage may vary, but expect this to take between 30 and 60 minutes. While that may seem like a long time, testing and adding 50 custom nameservers would take much longer manually.

The Tabular Data tab is where your results are for more advanced users although there's no harm in looking it over. In short, it is the final benchmark results, sorted by nameserver performance. However, there is something to be learned here as well. Just scroll down for how to interpret the results.

The Conclusions tab is very, very important, as time has shown. While the program is simple to use, it's all about the conclusions. So, when in doubt, cancel that, always read the conclusions tab so you can understand what you're seeing. Of course, the geeks can go there for the results.

Gibson Research has quite a few unique apps, and DNS Benchmark is another excellent example of this. Anyone wanting to tweak their internet connection will find the information made available with DNS Benchmark essential to getting the most from that tweaking. It can be simple to use, yet very educational as well. The Gibson Research website also features in-depth documentation, a how-to, and questions and answers should you need it.

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