Please note, pinging public DNS servers is a useless metric, because you would never know if your provider hijacks your DNS packets or even all traffic to those public servers.
Yes.
> what's the alternative
a) some ISP targets, eg mailcluster.zen.co.uk
b) lg.he.net and bgp.he.net
Please note, pinging public DNS servers is a useless metric, because you would never know if your provider hijacks your DNS packets or even all traffic to those public servers.