How does one choose a domain name server?

Here are some freshman questions, asked because the ISP
(amerispot.com) that supplies a wi-fi hot spot does not have
a reliable DNS.

Although five-minutes of pinging 198.77.116.8 showed only a
23% packet loss, the DNS would not resolve http://www.....
all day yesterday. No problem displaying a web page when the
browser (Firefox) is given an IP address. No problems with
nntp, pop, smtp.

Is the ISP's DNS address my only choice?
Is a DNS offered by its owner to others for a fee?
How would I find and utilize a different DNS?

--David

"David Ellis" <antispam@nowhere.org> wrote in message
news:5cWdnRuXQ_CWSjveRVn-sg@sti.net...
> Here are some freshman questions, asked because the ISP (amerispot.com)
> that supplies a wi-fi hot spot does not have a reliable DNS.
>
> Although five-minutes of pinging 198.77.116.8 showed only a 23% packet
> loss, the DNS would not resolve http://www..... all day yesterday. No
> problem displaying a web page when the browser (Firefox) is given an IP
> address. No problems with nntp, pop, smtp.
>
> Is the ISP's DNS address my only choice?
> Is a DNS offered by its owner to others for a fee?
> How would I find and utilize a different DNS?
>
> --David

In this type of situation, I generally run my own.
Here's a good free one:

http://ntcanuck.com/

--
Best Regards
Ron Lowe

Ron Lowe wrote:
> "David Ellis" <antispam@nowhere.org> wrote in message
> news:5cWdnRuXQ_CWSjveRVn-sg@sti.net...
>
>>Here are some freshman questions, asked because the ISP (amerispot.com)
>>that supplies a wi-fi hot spot does not have a reliable DNS.
>>
>>Although five-minutes of pinging 198.77.116.8 showed only a 23% packet
>>loss, the DNS would not resolve http://www..... all day yesterday. No
>>problem displaying a web page when the browser (Firefox) is given an IP
>>address. No problems with nntp, pop, smtp.
>>
>>Is the ISP's DNS address my only choice?
>>Is a DNS offered by its owner to others for a fee?
>>How would I find and utilize a different DNS?
>>
>>--David
>
>
> In this type of situation, I generally run my own.
> Here's a good free one:
>
> http://ntcanuck.com/
>
Ron, thanks very much for this. I'll install it. If you
don't mind one more question...

From what I've read at the TreeWalk site I can't determine
what it does if, after it is freshly installed and goes on
line while my ISP's DNS is down. Does it use some other DNS
to get started? How does it initially get the IP-address list?
--David

>> In this type of situation, I generally run my own.
>> Here's a good free one:
>>
>> http://ntcanuck.com/
>>
> Ron, thanks very much for this. I'll install it. If you don't mind one
> more question...
>
> From what I've read at the TreeWalk site I can't determine what it does
> if, after it is freshly installed and goes on line while my ISP's DNS is
> down. Does it use some other DNS to get started? How does it initially get
> the IP-address list?
> --David

It does not use your ISP's server at all.
It does the full lookup from the ground up by itself.
It does what all caching name-servers do.

On a cold-start, the cache is empty, it essentially knows nothing.
So it as a built-in 'cheat sheet' to get it started.
This cheat-sheet is called the 'Root Hints'.
It has a hard-coded list of the 13 Internet root nameservers as an initial
starting point.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Root_nameserver

If you query www.google.com, here's what happens...
Treewalk will query one of the 13 root nameservers and ask for the
A-record ( host IP address) of www.google.com, and it will get the reply:
"I don't know. I have delegated all .com names to the .com servers,
go ask them, here's their addresses."
So treewalk will then go ask one of the .com nameservers instead, which will
reply with:
"I don't know. I have delegated all google.com names to the google.com
servers,
go ask them, here's their addresses."
Finally, treewalk will go to the google.com nameservers, and ask for the
A-record ( host IP address) of www.google.com, which will reply with:
Here's the IP address of www.google.com.

To see this in action, go here: http://www.dnsstuff.com/ and enter a website
in the top right box, DNS lookup, and hit the 'Lookup' button. You will
see the queries being re-directed down all the way from the root.

Now, Treewalk has cached the whole path, including the IP addresses of all
the nameservers which were queried right down the path. So if we now look
up www.microsoft.com, then ot no longer needs to query the root nameservers,
it already knows about the .com branch, and can query it directly.

The more a DNS server is used, the greater the chance of a cache hit, so it
gets quicker and has to hit the root and Top-Level-Domain nameservers less.

--
Best Regards
Ron Lowe

Ron, thank you for the thorough description of what TW does
to get started. It's a fascinating journey for this
network neophyte.

TW is running well after I installed Update for Windows XP
SP2 (884020). It already allows Firefox to display
www.washingtonpost.com with a speed I'd not seen before. I
suspect that home page has a few dozen name links.

I must use TW DNS Control Panel Stop when accessing news or
mail with Mozilla Thunderbird. A small price to pay for
freedom from the ISP DNS.

Thanks again for your help.
--David