New tool: DNS Benchmark — compare resolver speeds from your location

Technology in SA
1

I put together a quick tool that tests DNS resolver speeds right from your browser. It probes Cloudflare, Google, Quad9, OpenDNS, AdGuard, NextDNS, ControlD, CleanBrowsing and a bunch of others, then ranks them by average latency.

Some interesting things I noticed running it:

  • Cloudflare (1.1.1.1) usually comes out fastest for me, but not always by much
  • Quad9 and NextDNS are surprisingly competitive depending on your ISP
  • Direct IP probes (where the provider hosts a TLS cert on the resolver IP itself) tend to be cleaner measurements
  • Your ISP’s default DNS is often nowhere near the fastest

Try it here: DNS Benchmark - Compare Resolver Speeds | southafricafacts.co.za

Be interesting to see what different ISPs (Vodacom, MTN, Telkom, Openserve, etc) pull. Drop your results in the thread.

2

Ran this on a 100Mbps fibre line with Openserve and here’s what I got:

Top 3:

  1. Cloudflare (1.1.1.1) - 12ms avg
  2. Quad9 (9.9.9.9) - 18ms avg
  3. Google (8.8.8.8) - 24ms avg

Pretty interesting how much variance there is. What are people on Vodacom or MTN fibre pulling? Would be cool to see a comparison across different ISPs.