How to pick the right nameserver

Assuming the following structure:

• example.com registered in the United Staates (ISP 1)
• example.ch registered in Switzerland (ISP 2)
• The server registered in Switzerland (ISP 3)

Everyone of the 3 ISPs is offering their own nameservers to use (for any) TLD.

What criteria should be considered upon choosing the best nameserver in terms of response times?

Should I use one global nameserver for all domains (and if so: which one?), use every ISP's own nameserver for the respective domain? Or is this question stupid?

Solution 1:

Ideally, if this is a big concern, you would put DNS servers closest to the user population the site is intended for, so using local ISPs might be wisest. But there's a good argument for putting all the management for all of your DNS in a single place. You have to figure out what's going to work for you - there is no single "best" answer.

But this probably isn't a big concern. A bigger concern is what we call "diversity" - don't have any single one of those providers host all of the DNS servers for a given domain. Always have at least a secondary DNS server that is hosted somewhere with absolutely no connection to or dependency on the infrastructure of the primary DNS server. (Other than zone transfers of course.)

Because this is what happens when you do it wrong : http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2001/01/41412?currentPage=all