Probably a silly question (and not specifically linux-related), but when configuring a router (or other box) for my home LAN, is there some reason why I must or should use the nameservers provided by my ISP?

I'm thinking they might be closest, so fastest. However, I have recently been having problems accessing certain sites. Example: google.com & cnn.com usually load right up very fast. Google still does. CNN takes about 2 minutes or it times out. I switched to external nameservers and presto, both sites and everything else loads up super fast.

Does this sound like my ISP is having nameserver issues? Do I really need to use their nameservers at all?

Thanks,
apollo

I don't see any reason why not, as long as the owner of the nameserver(s) you do use doesn't mind. A google search turned up some public access nameservers.

And yeah, if it takes two minutes for your ISP to figure out cnn.com's IP address, I'd say they may be having issues. You might want to mention it to them. Though, are you sure the timeouts are caused by a nameserver issue, and not a server load problem on cnn.com?

Is it slow if you surf to the IP address of cnn.com?

64.236.16.116

No. Surfing directly to IP addresses was lightning fast. Also, switching to different nameservers solved the problem. I'm now convinced the ISP's nameservers were messing up.

This leads me to another question. I now have 3 nameservers in my resolv.conf file. Does the first one listed always get tried first? Then if it fails does the 2nd get tried, and so on? Or are they rotated/balanced somehow? Also, is there any way to tell how often each nameserver in resolv.conf is being used? A log showing stats somewhere maybe?

Thanks!
Apollo

According to the resolv.conf manual page, the nameservers are tried in order; if one times out, the next one is tried. Dunno about logging, though.

Unles your ISP doesn't block DNS trafic you could you use any DNS server you like (provided that it's publicly available).
As you have discovered it can be much faster to use some other DNS. I my self use another DNS since my ISP has overloaded and crappy DNS servers.