: Domain name servers connecting time and details According to Ping reports my web browser is looking up DNS information in 180ms to connect my domain. I registered that domain name from godaddy.com.

@Angie530

The ping time is how long it takes for a packet to travel from your computer to the domain you are pinging.

So if I ping facebook from san francisco, and hit their server in palo alto, then the ping time will be short. If i ping them from japan, the ping time will be higher because it takes time for those packets to travel. (this is a bad example since facebook has servers all over the world, and closest server usually is the one you get).

As for DNS. A dns simply translates a name to address. So facebook translates to its ip addresses. DNS holds different types of records for different server, services, etc. When you ping a site by its name, versus ip.

Ping facebook.com
vs
Ping 123.123.123.123

Then the dns server looks up the ip address first, and pings that. That lookup of ip address information usually takes a small period of time. This is usually called fetching. Your computer will cache this information so the next time around the trip is not required. This cache is set by the DNS ttl value. But your DNS host (such as google public DNS) will also cache this information in an effort to make the web faster. So if you have comcast, att or google as your dns, each will cache the request.

If your goal is to have a quick site here are some items to consider.
1. DNS hosting is not a big expense in page speed. If you are super worried about DNS speed then pay for premium dns services such as Godaddy's or Zerigo (which has a lot of settings).


Serve your site's static content using a CDN. A cdn is a group of servers that host static content (which doesnt change often) from local resources. MaxCDN is a good suggestion for startups. They are cheap and reliable.
Make sure that your site is built for speed. Yslow and google pagespeed will give you more insight on how to make your site load faster.
Make sure that your server resources are configured and that you have enough of them to support your site. This gets technical but includes features such as compression, caching, and server headers.


Although performance is not something that totally depends on the money you spend, money can usually solve most performance problems. Adding resources, cdn, etc, will all speed up your site, but it can get expensive if your site is not built for speed. In other words, performance should not be an afterthought, but dont spend too much time worrying about it where your product or site launch is delayed. Its something you can continually tweak to improve, and with profits put more money behind.

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