i had the problem last night with earthlink dns.. last I checked it was down. I just rerouted my dns to my witchita state univ dns @ 156.26.1.1
but now I am using my brothers company DNS with about 11ms response times.. not bad for being on the other side of LA.
dns1.softaware.com [198.199.206.7]
Edit:
Its says DNS1.softaware.net but my brother controls it partly. They host bulkregister's DNS on one of those servers.. and are made to be extrememly fast.