The news about Google’s new public DNS service seems to have ebbed down a bit after the initial announcement which can probably be attributed to the fact that reviews of the service where not all favorable.
The two biggest points of criticism were privacy and speed. A group of users stated that they would not want to use Google DNS servers because of privacy implications as Google, at least in theory, would be able to follow every move they make on the Internet.
Speed on the other hand was not best in class as well, at least not for all users who tried the service. While it did improve look ups for some, it did the opposite for others.
The best way to find out is to test Google’s public DNS servers to see if they offer any speed improvements. We covered a DNS benchmark tool called Namebench a while ago which can be used for that purpose.
But the benchmark software might not be needed in some cases. Some users would probably like to test the new DNS by simply switching to its servers in the operating system to see if they notice any speed improvements.
Google DNS Helper has been designed for this user group. The portable program provides one click access to switch the computer’s current DNS server to Google’s public server.
Even better is the restore DNS option to restore the previous DNS server if Google’s DNS server did not live up to the promises made.
Google DNS Helper is a portable software program for the Windows operating system. The 89 Kilobyte program can be downloaded from the developer’s website. It requires the Microsoft .net Framework to run.
Update: The program has been renamed to DNS Helper. The name change comes with improved functionality as support for other DNS providers has been added to the program.
The program displays options to switch to one of the integrated DNS services with three clicks. It supports Google, Comodo, OpenDNS, DNS Advantage, Cisco Systems and ScrubIt currently.
In addition to that, you can specify custom DNS servers instead, for instance services not integrated natively, to switch to them using the program.
The handy restore option is still available to restore the default DNS service used on the system prior to using the application.