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namebench 1.3.1

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(8) 3.125

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The NameBench Project

namebench is a DNS service benchmarking tool. Speed up your Internet experience by finding the best DNS servers available! namebench can utilize your Web browser history, or standardized datasets in order to provide an individualized recommendation.

What's New

Version 1.3.1:

Do not count failed censorship checks against a hosts overall reliability rating.
Set censorship check timeout to a hardcoded 30 seconds.
Update Google Public DNS node id detection.
Updated DNS server data.
Other bugfixes.

Requirements
Intel/PPC, Mac OS X 10.5 or later

DNS Performanc...

+1
Free

Charts DNS server performance.

namebench User Discussion (Write a Review)

ver. 1.x:

(8)

Your rating: Now say why...

Overall:

(9)

sort: smiles | time

+27

--marc reviewed on 08 Apr 2014

This Apache licensed, open source, not-been-update since June 2010 ran successfully for me on Mavericks 10.9

The application does support IPv4 ... but does not support IPv6.

With 'namebench', I was able to find some reliable IPv4 DNS "Domain Name" servers to use which also did not do annoying "DNS Hijacking".

To my surprise, Time Warner DNS systems had timeouts where the servers *never* responded. (Does Time Warner know they slow internet traffic BW consumption by dropping a % of DNS responses ???)

I dropped Time Warner DNS, made some other DNS changes, and now my internet access is faster and more efficient on the same connection ... thanks to 'namebench'.

[Version 1.3.1]

Gunni reviewed on 03 Jan 2014

FWIW, I just downloaded and ran this app on a new MacBook Pro Retina running OS 10.9.1 and it worked perfectly!

[Version 1.3.1]

+42

Ochre commented on 12 Mar 2013

May currently be broken on OS X 10.8.2: consistently hangs at one point and never recovers. A similar report from an unrelated user has been posted on the Namebench forums with no response for 3 months.

Looks like this is a goner :(

[Version 1.3.1]

2 Replies

+60

Endymion0000 replied on 19 Sep 2013

Works fine for me in OS X 10.8.5

+403

MacUpdate-Lon replied on 19 Dec 2013

Me too… works fine with OS X 10.8.5 on a MBP. But yeah, development is nil. Too bad.

-5

-4

Buck Wheat reviewed on 17 Dec 2011

The app does not run period. It immediately unexpectedly quits the moment I open the program. I am running OS X (10.7.2) on a iMac 12,2 3.4 GHz Intel Core i7 with 16 GB of RAM, a 251 GB APPLE SSD TS256C and a 2 TB HD and a AMD Radeon HD 6970M graphics card with 2 GB of VRAM. If you need any additional info or need me to test something please respond.

[Version 1.3.1]

-4

-18

Whosyourtator reviewed on 04 Aug 2011

This would be a great concept except for one thing. Seriously, you should remove the censorship check feature. Doing DNS queries for these web sites is a good way to get your door busted in during the middle of the night. At least include a warning or something so that people know what they will be connecting to. I was appalled at the list of sites that showed up on the results html page. Seriously?

[Version 1.3.1]

+403

MacUpdate-Lon commented on 12 Aug 2010

I use this app every day. It just works. Dead simple to use. Nice stuff.

[Version 1.3.1]

+855

Negritude commented on 03 Jun 2010

Namebench is now at version 1.3. It fixes a critical bug that prevented the use of Alexa data under OS X.

[Version 1.2]

+680

sjk commented on 26 Feb 2010

MU doesn't mention that v1.2 is currently beta (1.2-BETA1).

[Version 1.2]

1 Reply

Thomas Stromberg replied on 01 Mar 2010

The listing has now been updated so that it links to the real 1.2 release.

Gabereal commented on 08 Jan 2010

It uses EITHER your IE history or, better yet because I always delete mine, Alexa's 10000 list of top global domains from around the world. THEN you may select the data as weighted (statistically), randomized, or chunked. It will also advise of dns hijacks and the like avoiding them automatically in it's final report which is optimized for your region.
Nothing whatsoever to do with a google datamine nonsense review previously posted. I switched to treehoo anywho.

[Version 1.1]

1 Reply

+145

Thyx replied on 23 May 2011

And by IE you mean you've got OS 9 on your iBook? Me too :-)

Amaloney commented on 05 Jan 2010

Using namebench 1.1 on a Macbook Pro running OS X 10.6.2 and an Apple Airport.

After I start namebench there is an inordinately long time searching.
During that time I lose DNS capability in that I get msgs that the page cannot be found.

When I quit namebench, this loss continues.

To restore my ability to use the internet, I must shut down the Airport and restart it.

[Version 1.1]

+98

TSMelo had trouble on 16 Nov 2009

Crashes every time I try it... Since there's (almost) no configuration, I don't believe I'm doing anything wrong.
Any thoughts?

[Version 0.9.3]

2 Replies

Thomas Stromberg (developer) replied on 16 Nov 2009

Wow, thanks for the heads up on the crashing. Right now there is not a logfile being written to, but you can see all of the logs by opening up Applications -> Utilities -> Console. If it is still causing you problems, can you open a bug at http://code.google.com/p/namebench/issues/list with the log messages? I will take care of it ASAP. Thanks!