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Google Public DNS Introduced


jalaffa

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Introducing Google Public DNS

12/03/2009 08:35:00 AM

When you type www.wikipedia.org/ into your browser's address bar, you expect nothing less than to be taken to Wikipedia. Chances are you're not giving much thought to the work being done in the background by the Domain Name System, or DNS.

Today, as part of our ongoing effort to make the web faster, we're launching our own public DNS resolver called Google Public DNS, and we invite you to try it out.

Most of us aren't familiar with DNS because it's often handled automatically by our Internet Service Provider (ISP), but it provides an essential function for the web. You could think of it as the switchboard of the Internet, converting easy-to-remember domain names — e.g., www.google.com — into the unique Internet Protocol (IP) numbers — e.g., 74.125.45.100 — that computers use to communicate with one another.

The average Internet user ends up performing hundreds of DNS lookups each day, and some complex pages require multiple DNS lookups before they start loading. This can slow down the browsing experience. Our research has shown that speed matters to Internet users, so over the past several months our engineers have been working to make improvements to our public DNS resolver to make users' web-surfing experiences faster, safer and more reliable. You can read about the specific technical improvements we've made in our product documentation and get installation instructions from our product website.

If you're web-savvy and comfortable with changing your network settings, check out the Google Code Blog for detailed instructions and more information on how to set up Google Public DNS on your computer or router.

As people begin to use Google Public DNS, we plan to share what we learn with the broader web community and other DNS providers, to improve the browsing experience for Internet users globally. The goal of Google Public DNS is to benefit users worldwide while also helping the tens of thousands of DNS resolvers improve their services, ultimately making the web faster for everyone.

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Thanks for the heads up :)

Any reviews yet, do you think this is better than OpenDNS(which is what I'm using right now)?

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Thanx for the news. :)

I'm sure this would be faster than OpenDNS. ;)

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I dunno I think I will stick with OpenDNS until I find out what Google does with the info they can log..LOL.. as large as Google is it would seem like it would speed things up. however I am always wondering why my system is always waiting for Google to load the files.. I dunno.. waiting on someone to use and review it..

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That's the reason I haven't started usin it. Well the privacy policy says a lot. But I'm somehow unhappy with it. It maybe useful for others who don't like to do piracy, but I'm unsure about it. Not to forget that this DNS service is gonna help google more than us, if I'm not wrong.

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OpenDNS blocks botnets and some malware, I trust them more than Google ever since that Google Chrome incident with privacy. o.O

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I've never heard of Open DNS before. Seems everyone is using it. I guess I should check it out.

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Yes.. you should configure your Network Connections, Router and Network Devices... and get the OpenDNS Updater and Free account setup.. You'll be glad you did..:thumbsup:

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I just finished setting up an OpenDNS account and setting up my router to work with it. And I went through the settings on the OpenDNS "dashboard." Should I expect to notice any difference in internet performance?

And I got the IPupdater 2.2 installed also.

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You should expect some difference in DNS query time.. Plus you have some traffic shaping options for filtering, caching, and tracking which you can use.. and can be very useful.. and you can also set up difference configurations/networks as well.. When I switched over.. my load times decreased because I wasn't waiting for the DNS query as long.. much faster... Plus several protections, the new beta cache has come along since then.. seemed more reliable too really..

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According to Ars Technica, 'Google Public DNS service not ideal for everyone.'

Unfortunately, despite the anycasting, advanced caching, and extensive security features, Google Public DNS is not the ideal DNS service. For one thing, it's not called "experimental" for nothing. From my home, I can't reach 8.8.8.8. Packets end up ping-ponging between the addresses 9.9.9.18 and 9.9.9.17. Apparently some routing engineer at Google is a bit dyslexic. (It does work from another location that I have access to.) Also, despite Google's claim that it provides NXDOMAIN responses whenever a domain name doesn't exist, its servers actually respond with REFUSED when looking up a name that goes with a private address (such as in the 192.168.x.x or 10.x.x.x ranges). My Mac doesn't seem to like this, so it keeps repeating those requests over and over. OpenDNS, which also runs a network of public, open DNS servers, doesn't have this problem. OpenDNS also allows users to set up malware blocking and NXDOMAIN redirection through a dashboard.

Source: Google Public DNS service not ideal for everyone

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Given that Google dns is new, I can assume they will try to match opendns at some point but for me it's about the features. It's more about that feeling inside that Google, as always, will have ulterior motives for their data collection.

@heath: the dns query time to opendns is actually longer than that using the isp dns. Typically the response from your ISP is within 30ms, the response from opendns will be higher depending on location. The features of opendns are top notch though.

The advantage of opendns other than the obvious features is that it is updated faster than your isp dns servers, much faster. Sometimes sites may change their IP or server and your isp dns still sends you to the old address but opendns gives the correct location.

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i changed just now to google dns, and ping time has decreased for me a bit. just some feedback for everyone. peace:)

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@LeetPirate:

The response time is barely noticeable ^_^

I was only correcting something that heath said earlier about the dns queries being faster to opendns.;)
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Fast or not my ISP's DNS sucks. For many years I got this error in logging into MSN and troubleshoot sayin that there's a DNS problem it cannot solve. From the time I've switched to OpenDNS I haven't had any problems woth MSN.

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If you want to test your DNS lookup times with different providers, check out ns_bench.

DNS resolution speed should make no difference to ping times. The ping can be divided into 2 sections. The first resolves the URL into an IP address. This will change with different DNS providers, network congestion etc. Then the ping command does the proper ping timing. This is totally independent of the first part since at this point the destination IP address is known.

I suggest if you use OpenDNS, you update via DNS-O-Matic as this can also update any of your Dynamic DNS providers at the same time. I don't use it, but it looks like the OpenDNS Updater also supports it, as do many other free updater offerings.

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Yea OpenDNS updater (v2.2) has an option for enablin DNS-O-Matic updates.;)

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Thanks for all the info folks....i really appreciate it. My questions is this, and please excuse my ignorance if this is a stupid question...if time warner is my provider, and is my dns server provider, but i use opendns or google as i am as of late(i love trying new tech stuff...i think im addicted...lol)...why do we have to pay for internet service at all...if we are using an open source dns server? i was almost to scared to ask this out of fear of revealing my ignorance, so please don't make fun of me to bad...lol. im learning something new every day, and thats a good thing i think. thanks again. peace :)

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