Does DNS Affect Ping or Matchmaking?

[manwithnoshoes]

I'm looking into getting a DNS to help with privacy and such, but I play a lot of games online and don't want to lose any performance there. Does using a DNS affect ping or matchmaking? I've searched around and found answers for both yes and no. Which DNS would affect it the least?

 

[Jesse_20]

Any time you add hops to your route (like going to a dns and then to your destination), you introduce delay. How much that delay is depends on how far the dns server is from you, the dns server's performance, the amount of traffic on it, etc.

So yes, a dns can affect your latency in games to the point of adding stutter.

 

[manwithnoshoes]

Any time you add hops to your route (like going to a dns and then to your destination), you introduce delay. How much that delay is depends on how far the dns server is from you, the dns server's performance, the amount of traffic on it, etc.

So yes, a dns can affect your latency in games to the point of adding stutter.

Is there a way to quickly switch between an alternate DNS server and the default? I only want a different DNS server for private browsing. I don't need it up all the time, especially while I am gaming.

 

[Jesse_20]

Just set your web browser to use a proxy server. Point it to your DNS and your done.

 

[rhysiam]

That's not really accurate.

All DNS servers and your client on your computer will cache resolved domain names for a set amount of time (called TTL - time to live). When your computer attempts to communicate with a remote host (such as a game server) it will first check whether that record is cached and whether it's still current (i.e., the TTL hasn't expired). If so, it simply uses the cached IP address and does NOT contact your DNS server at all.
So even if you had a very high latency DNS server, it would only affect the first communication with a host, and then sporadic communication attempts in future once the TTL expired (anywhere from a few seconds, to an hour usually).

On top of that, if you understand how DNS actually works, it involves multiple requests to multiple servers, only one of which you actually control.
So even with your own DNS server, you're only in control of the latency for a tiny fraction of the overall time it takes a DNS server to return a record. For example, if I want to go to www.google.com.au my DNS server...
1) goes to the top tier DNS servers to find out who owns ".au"
2) then to the ".au" servers to find out who owns ".com.au",
3) then to the ".com.au" servers to find out who owns "google.com.au"
4) then to "google.com.au" servers to find out the authoritative IP address for "www.google.com.au"

Unless my server on the local network is utterly terrible, all the latency will come from communicating with all those other DNS servers.

In other words, even on the sporadic occasions when the cached records expire and need to be refreshed, unless your server is configured incorrectly, or there's some other issue going on, it's just not going to make any real difference to gaming latency.

 

[Jesse_20]

Just so you are aware though.... any DNS you set up yourself and is using your ISP's network ( so anything on your home network) is NOT anonymous. Using a VPN, which is someone else's server that is not on your isp's network, will provide privacy, but requires a monthly fee for using them..

 

[rhysiam]

Just set your web browser to use a proxy server. Point it to your DNS and your done.

Do you actually know what you're talking about here, or are you just trolling? Or are you just starting out trying to help people here on the forums?

With respect, each contribution you have made to this thread has been partially or entirely incorrect.

A DNS server is totally different to a proxy server. You can't point your browser to a DNS server using the proxy feature... it's a different protocol running on different ports for a different purpose.

Just so you are aware though.... any DNS you set up yourself and is using your ISP's network ( so anything on your home network) is NOT anonymous. Using a VPN, which is someone else's server that is not on your isp's network, will provide privacy, but requires a monthly fee for using them..

DNS has nothing to do with privacy. It literally translates domain names to IP addresses and vice versa. Once your computer has the IP address, the role of DNS is done and your server sits entirely idle until your computer visits a different website (requiring a different DNS lookup), or the TTL expires and the record needs to be checked again.

No traffic is routed through the DNS server.
The DNS server has no visibility of what's happening on the network beyond which domain names have been requested.

 

[rhysiam]

OK. I've gone through this more carefully and I think we've got completely side-tracked.

@Jesse_20... I see where you're coming from with the privacy angle now. My apologies if I was overly harsh with my previous response, though some of the information you are providing to this thread is not accurate.

OP: Can you start again.
When you say "privacy", what do you mean?
Because - and on this @Jesse is absolutely correct - a DNS server does NOT help with privacy.
Do you actually mean a VPN, and not DNS? Because then your original question would make complete sense. Right now it doesn't, because you can't really "get a DNS"... that doesn't make sense. You can build your own DNS server, but that doesn't help your privacy in any way.
DNS can be a potential security issue, but that's not really related to privacy.

If you actually mean "VPN" and not "DNS", then YES is the answer to your original question. Connecting to a VPN server means that all traffic to and from your PC gets bounced off that VPN server via an encrypted channel. You latency will increase, often by quite a bit as many VPN servers are located in other countries which have lesser legal powers to extract information. That's great if you want privacy... but no good at all for low latency connections.
However, you set up a VPN and can connect & disconnect it manually whenever you want. It takes a couple of seconds to connect or disconnect once set up. So you can just connect when you want anonymity (browsing and the like), and disconnect when you want low-latency (for gaming).

 

[manwithnoshoes]

@rhysiam I had just heard that using a VPN could get you blocked from using certain sites, and that a DNS let you go around it. As long as it doesn't affect gaming performance I'll give it a try. Thank you for your help.