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Speed-up your surfing with Google's Public DNS
Don your tin foil hats, ladies and gentlemen. Take the following news with a pinch of salt and admire their noble privacy policy. Now brace yourself: Google, with the benevolent and seemingly-altruistic intent of speeding up the Internet, have just launched a public DNS service. What is DNS? Computers on the Internet don't actually have names -- they have numerical IP addresses. DNS maps names to numbers. When you type in 'DownloadSquad.com', DNS runs off and resolves that to an IP address. DNS is almost completely visible to you, the end user. Except for one thing: it's slow. Most Internet users will use their ISP's DNS servers which can be slow or buggy or even return the wrong results. With Google's new public DNS servers, they are guaranteeing faster speeds and more accurate results. Apparently DNS servers can also be compromised and fake details inserted -- with Google's service you should be more secure.
But there are implications. Good implications, but still, you wouldn't seriously expect Google to launch something as huge as this with purely innocent intentions... would you? Google wants to speed up your access to their services. Their Voice, YouTube and Docs services -- all of these could gain substantially from faster DNS resolution speeds. Then there's their free Wi-Fi they've been offering -- of course they want to guarantee a high-quality experience for their users, so they need to provide a fast end-to-end pipe for their web apps and searches. DNS is a big stepping-stone in that direction. Next up is actually rolling out their own Internet backbone... (one day soon, I assure you).
I'm just amazed that they're promising to keep the wealth of data they will accrue purely within the Google Public DNS project. Imagine if we all used their DNS service -- they'd know, without cookies, without Analytics, exactly what you're doing at any given moment. Food for thought...
Incidentally, if you want to use the new service, simply change your network settings to use 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 as your DNS servers. For more details, check out the Google Code page for their Public DNS project.
[via Official Google Blog]
Comments
34
Subscribe to commentsdrhellknowDec 3rd 2009 1:55PM
Looks like someone typed the second one wrong in the screenshot. Oops.
Money MikeDec 3rd 2009 2:01PM
Looks right to me. Didn't you read the article or are you unfamiliar with DNS settings. The second one is the alternate address.
Money MikeDec 3rd 2009 2:02PM
Sorry, you're right. It should be 8.8.8.4, not 8.8.4.4. I didn't see that 4 when I looked the first time.
Good catch.
Money MikeDec 3rd 2009 2:05PM
Ok, the fact that I still wrote that wrong and the fact that I can't edit my post are really pissing me off. It should be 8.8.4.4, not 8.8.8.4.
Aargh.
Sebastian AnthonyDec 3rd 2009 2:06PM
I got the screenshot wrong, oops!
Hopefully people will read the article too, and not squint at the small numbers :)
drhellknowDec 3rd 2009 2:10PM
I can't tell you how many times in updating my own DNS servers I typed the trip-8 rather than what it should be.
BrianDec 5th 2009 3:05AM
Stop failing Money Mike
doctorhellknowDec 3rd 2009 1:56PM
Someone typed the second address wrong in the screenshot... Whoops.
Money MikeDec 3rd 2009 1:59PM
I understand your concerns - and people do need to know about them - but I think so many people are starting to learn nowadays that all your information online activity is available *somewhere* anyway. For the people who still don't understand that posting something online is like putting it on a billboard in Times Square, then the privacy concerns with this here don't even matter. Besides, the people who are savvy enough to change their DNS settings (no, of course it's not hard for people like us) are probably already aware of the implications.
I think having this option is awesome. I already use a bunch of Google services anyway, so that works for me.
Now what about cell phones that run the Android platform? Can this be useful too? Don't quote me on this, but I'm pretty sure I can assign a static IP address on my phone and though I didn't bother doing it, I thought I saw DNS settings in there as well. Now, I would assume this would only be applicable when I'm connected through wifi, but I don't know enough about 3G to be sure.
Kris120890Dec 3rd 2009 2:01PM
I started using opendns like 10 minutes ago and noticed ther were talking about google public dns. I like google but I think I will stay with opendns.
Sgt ZeppelinDec 3rd 2009 2:53PM
I've been using OpenDNS for about a year now, but I think I might give Google's service a try. I'll probably switch back quickly, but I'm just interested.
RGDec 3rd 2009 2:13PM
So how long before google=internet ;)
SPDY, Chrome OS, DNS...
Money MikeDec 3rd 2009 2:14PM
Wait a second. I just read the original Google blog posting and learned something I didn't even know. You can change the DNS settings on the router itself? That means I could do it once and never have to remember to change it on each computer setup? I've changed all kinds of router settings throughout the years, but I never realized you could do it on the router. Then again, I really never had the need or desire to.
RGDec 3rd 2009 2:26PM
Yep, once and forget it. For example Linksys router DNS setting http://www.opendns.com/img/start_linksys2.gif
jfjbDec 4th 2009 4:51PM
duh!
MichaelDec 3rd 2009 3:01PM
How much does this affect browsing? How to test it?
Sebastian AnthonyDec 3rd 2009 3:38PM
You'll notice 'new sites' loading faster. Sites you often visit will be much the same, as their IP is stored in a cache.
It's not really a huge deal. But nice in the grand scale of things :)
Andrew PollackDec 3rd 2009 3:32PM
anyond done performance comparison with opendns?
TheLinxDec 3rd 2009 3:43PM
> Google wants to speed up your access to their services. Their Voice,
> YouTube and Docs services -- all of these could gain substantially from
> faster DNS resolution speeds.
Oh no, you can resolve YouTube's IP half a second faster than other sites!
Google are sooo evil!
Sebastian AnthonyDec 3rd 2009 4:03PM
I never said they were evil. I just said that them running DNS is quite a big step :)