DNS Performance Test is a great cross-platform utility for testing DNS servers. To begin, head over to their homepage and select the appropriate download. In my examples, I will be using Ubuntu 10.10 64 bit, so make the necessary adjustments.

http://swmirror.zapto.org/cms/index.php/software-download/dns-performance-test/

Extract the contents of the zip file. (You may have to make the program executable. Right click on “Dpt-Linux”, choose properties, select the “Permissions” tab, and check “Allow executing file as a program”)

Set your primary DNS server to whatever you want to test. For my example, I will set mine to 4.2.2.1

Open Dpt-Linux and hit start. The program will randomize a 10,000 entry list of domain names and proceed to query each one of them with your selected DNS server. Once finished, you can look at the “Stats” tab. You will see useful statistics such as best, worst, and average query times. You will also see the number of timeouts and successful queries. If you want to compare these results to another DNS server, the main thing you will be looking at is the “Average Query Time”. Go ahead and run the test again, except this time, change your primary DNS server to the one provided by your ISP. Whichever has the lowest average query time would be the preferable one.

Overall, this is a very efficient tool for checking the lookup times on DNS servers and provides useful statistics to help you choose the best DNS server available.

*** Update for Ubuntu 11.10 32 bit ***

You must run this command for DNS Performance Test to work on 11.10:

sudo apt-get install libstdc++5