Most TCP/IP configurations have two places for DNS enties, most of the time they are the default provided by a given ISP.
Following up to the OpenDNS and/or GoogleDNS talks I was wondering if there would be anything to gain from keeping one of those entries an ISP one and the other an OpenDNS (or other) DNS entry?
berk
Oh yes. If one goes down, or gets slow due to overuse, the other will take over. The two DNS servers are also in different geographic locations on the assumption that both routes are unlikely to disappear at the same time.
Note that neither OpenDNS or GoogleDNS have a single central DNS server. They use Anycast:
to query the nearest available server and also do some load balancing. Same with the NSI root DNS servers, AT&T DSL, Comcast DNS, etc.
In general, you should use the closest and fastest DNS servers:
Only two?
OS X allows for a list of DNS; pretty much as many as you care to give it. I expect that would be true of other UNIX variants, also.
The reason to have several is to have a fallback if one is unreachable/fails/is overloaded.
When I used Comcast I learned to keep a list, because they never managed to figure out how to make their DNS work very reliably.
Isaac
Sorry, all day long yesterday it was WinXP all over the place; (Motorola DSL modem self-immolation, Dell laptop w/ self-immolating NVidia video card, clone PC w/ 'non-standard' licensing and, wait for it viri & trojans galore [ya think? Hmmm. Limewire, why am I not surprised?], and so on)
Disregarding my mini-rant, 'ipconfig /all' shows two DNS entries, hence my default like behavior.
Thx both I. & J. for real life feedback.
berk
Worse. Comcast has a DNS redirector setup so that failed queries deliver an useless list or possible typos. It's really a pain. Fortunately, there's an easy way out, which is to not use the "domain helper service" servers, and use the local DNS servers that do not have this feature:
Same with WinXP, and most likely other Windows variants, but I don't think there's much to be gained by going beyond two or three.
When I used Comcast, I learned to use a non-Comcast DNS. ;-)
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