Google opens public dns.

[gillll]

hmmm after alot of thoughts does it means google become one of the bad guys ? storing all dns requests ?




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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.

Posted by Prem Ramaswami, Product Manager

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/introducing-google-public-dns.html

[Nano2k]

Google DNS works better than my ISP DNS -> faster browsing.

[gillll]

yes but the google brother knows alot more about your surfing habbits....
which is quite alot.

[ubuntu83]

I am also experiencing faster browsing. Not yet checked it thoroughly but so far it feels fast.

[saaya]

will become? :P

the dns servers in taiwan are completely fcked up, this is great for me! :D
seems to be working fine for me... much better than before :)

[Mechromancer]

Their DNS seems fast, but I fear they know everything about me now, along with my ISP.

[kiwi]

Their DNS seems fast, but I fear they know everything about me now, along with my ISP.

Unless they use it illegally or share sensitive info to 3rd parties that should not matter, shout it?

[Katanai]

share sensitive info to 3rd parties ?

That's the problem, they also are the third party. :) Their add placement agency that is...

I don't know, I like Chrome a lot, I think it's the best browser out there. I don't use it though. I would like my net connection to be faster and more responsive, still I won't use this. Privacy is more important to me than internet speed...

[jaredpace]

Using it now, slight improvement. Thank you

[zalbard]

Hell, using it also.
Seems faster than what my ISP currently offers.

[LinkinParkBoy]

Too slow...

Google
Opendns
Sapo



8.8.8.8 lifehacker.com 85 msec
208.67.222.222 lifehacker.com 59 msec
212.55.154.174 lifehacker.com 19 msec
-----------------------
8.8.8.8 facebook.com 85 msec
208.67.222.222 facebook.com 54 msec
212.55.154.174 facebook.com 14 msec
-----------------------
8.8.8.8 www.gmail.com 104 msec
208.67.222.222 www.gmail.com 65 msec
212.55.154.174 www.gmail.com 15 msec
-----------------------
8.8.8.8 bbc.co.uk 76 msec
208.67.222.222 bbc.co.uk 55 msec
212.55.154.174 bbc.co.uk 19 msec
-----------------------
8.8.8.8 www.sapo.pt 93 msec
208.67.222.222 www.sapo.pt 53 msec
212.55.154.174 www.sapo.pt 47 msec
-----------------------
8.8.8.8 www.record.pt 60 msec
208.67.222.222 www.record.pt 56 msec
212.55.154.174 www.record.pt 28 msec
-----------------------
8.8.8.8 www.abola.pt 88 msec
208.67.222.222 www.abola.pt 58 msec
212.55.154.174 www.abola.pt 19 msec
-----------------------
8.8.8.8 rapidshare.com 98 msec
208.67.222.222 rapidshare.com 58 msec
212.55.154.174 rapidshare.com 18 msec

[EagleRock]

Very fast :)

[zalbard]

Too slow...
What would you suggest to use then?

[randomizer]

146ms latency would kill any benefit that a quick resolver could provide. Same reason I wouldn't use OpenDNS. Need closer server...

[Oliverda]

I'll use it as spare DNS.

[kiwi]

LinkinParkBoy, how did you measure that?


What would you suggest to use then?

Don't you have public DNS servers in your country (except your ISP)?

[zalbard]

Don't you have public DNS servers in your country (except your ISP)?
No idea tbh, lol. Maybe!

[LinkinParkBoy]

What would you suggest to use then?

I use my isp DNS, it's faster than google, this statement is for me, for you, you 'll have to test.


LinkinParkBoy, how did you measure that?

Don't you have public DNS servers in your country (except your ISP)?

Use ping on a command line to see the latency of your request. But always remember, this depends from people to people, ISP to ISP, because DNS is divided in zones. If the zone you are accessing doesn't have what you want on cache, you will have to check more DNS servers

ex: Ping www.google.com

[HeXDeMoN]

4.2.2.1 ,4.2.2.2 ectect. are faster for me then google's :P

[kiwi]

Use ping on a command line to see the latency of your request. But always remember, this depends from people to people, ISP to ISP, because DNS is divided in zones. If the zone you are accessing doesn't have what you want on cache, you will have to check more DNS servers

ex: Ping www.google.com

Mate, you have to measure nslookup and not ping :)

From linux command would be something like:
time nslookup www.xtremesystems.org


From my tests google DNS seems very stable and gives me ~70ms average response time. While my local DNS servers are faster with 20-30ms times they are not as stable and often give spikes such as 100-300ms responses going even up to 5 seconds sometimes :eek:

[Toysoldier]

Google DNS is waaaay faster for me. It feels like my internet connection got a speed boost :-) I have been using it since it was announced and no problems so far.
Even pages in Denmark loads faster now .... :woot

[RaZz!]

Google DNS is waaaay faster for me. It feels like my internet connection got a speed boost :-) I have been using it since it was announced and no problems so far.
Even pages in Denmark loads faster now .... :woot

most of the websites you guys usually visit are stored in your computer's local dns cache anyways :shrug: dunno why everyone gets performance boosts out of a sudden :p:

[D749]

Privacy is more important to me than internet speed...

Same. I love Google products but don't think for a minute they aren't making money off by recording everything you do through their products.

[XS_Rich]

most of the websites you guys usually visit are stored in your computer's local dns cache anyways :shrug: dunno why everyone gets performance boosts out of a sudden :p:

Because it's new, so everyone feels obliged to go "OMG IT'S WAY FASTER" without making any attempt to measure it. (Obviously some people do make the effort though, so kudos for the guys actually posting results ;) )

Unless your ISP is seriously sh*t, surely you're better off using your ISPs DNS servers just a couple of hops down the line, rather than Google's servers that are (for me in the UK at least), 11 hops away?

[Mechromancer]

The DNS Benchmark (http://www.grc.com/dns/benchmark.htm)

It is a pretty neat tool to see which are the fastest DNSes around for you. I'm not terribly certain if it is listing free DNSes or not. I tried two of the fastest and they worked great, but are owned by ThePlanet.com.

[Toysoldier]

most of the websites you guys usually visit are stored in your computer's local dns cache anyways :shrug: dunno why everyone gets performance boosts out of a sudden :p:

Well, maybe it's just a coincidence but there IS a difference. Before, certain pages were "slow" to load, but not anymore. The most noticeable difference I have is when logging on to my preferred VPN server. Before it would sometimes take ages to connect due to DNS timeouts (spotted in event viewer) but now it connects instantly !! - you need to see it to believe it. This all came after I changed my routers DNS to google's from my ISP's DNS (my ISP's DNS server is now number 3 on my routers DNS list).

[n00b 0f l337]

Wow alot quicker here at my dorms.

[Pontos]

As expected, these Google DNS are good for the US (They are on the west coast btw).

My ISP DNS server has 48ms ping while Google's has 210ms

Although my ISP DNS server redirect failed queries to a crappy search service instead of giving me a proper 404 page.
I had to firewall the address of such search service to avoid that...

[saaya]

Too slow...

Google
Opendns
Sapo

here in taiwan google is faster...
8844 is faster than 8888 for me i think

[DeadlyFire]

The DNS Benchmark (http://www.grc.com/dns/benchmark.htm)

It is a pretty neat tool to see which are the fastest DNSes around for you. I'm not terribly certain if it is listing free DNSes or not. I tried two of the fastest and they worked great, but are owned by ThePlanet.com.

Awesome! Thank you! I just used it and changed from my ISP's DNS and it seems to be much faster loading pages :up:

[Glow9]

My router is kind of a pain in the ass anyone try this out on a airport lemme know how u set it up and if it did anything.

[zanzabar]

why dont u just change your computers dns to googles and not the router

im torn on this, it allows google more tracking and im sure that they can sell the info affter a certain time period since they are not an isp so they wouldent have the same regulations, but then this should help people with bad isps and people with country wide firewalls

[annihilat0r]

Opendns is 6 hops away from me, while Google DNS is 12 hops.

I don't think this will be useful to people outside the Americas

[randomizer]

After running the benchmark, my ISP's servers were the fastest, followed by another ISP's DNS with almost the same speeds. No surprises there.

[kiwi]

Try this benchmark (http://code.google.com/p/namebench/) :)

http://namebench.googlecode.com/files/namebench_macosx.png


BTW, google DNS servers are physically not only in US, you can tell this by response times

[zalbard]

The DNS Benchmark (http://www.grc.com/dns/benchmark.htm)

It is a pretty neat tool to see which are the fastest DNSes around for you. I'm not terribly certain if it is listing free DNSes or not. I tried two of the fastest and they worked great, but are owned by ThePlanet.com.
Thank you, that's perfect. :up:
It appears to be that my local DNS server is a tiny bit better, so switched back. :yepp:

[saaya]

sweet, that dns benchmark is nice, cheers! :toast:

8844 is the fastest for me... by far...

http://img194.imageshack.us/img194/3014/dnsc.png

[Vinas]

I use my isp DNS, it's faster than google, this statement is for me, for you, you 'll have to test.



Use ping on a command line to see the latency of your request. But always remember, this depends from people to people, ISP to ISP, because DNS is divided in zones. If the zone you are accessing doesn't have what you want on cache, you will have to check more DNS servers

ex: Ping www.google.comYou'd want to test this against about several thousand pings to get an accurate account for performance here. A single or even a few pings are subject to all kinds of false positives that it's not even funny. In general I think that most people will find Google DNS to be faster. Even faster than Open DNS. More specifically, raw, non cached DNS queries will be a lot faster on average with GDNS.

[AndrewZorn]

yes but the google brother knows alot more about your surfing habbits....
which is quite alot.
OH NOES!!!

i hate when people phrase it that way

"THEY KNOW!!!! about the fact that im so boring"
vs
"statistics"

come on
google isnt going to bust in the door because they found out you were looking at :banana::banana::banana::banana:

time to start openDNS vs google DNS
im on openDNS now

[Kingcarcas]

I'm openDNS, i need convincing..

[zalbard]

OpenDNS is slower than Google DNS for me, according to the benchmark posted above.
I was wondering, though... It only checks the response time...
But doesn't a better DNS server have more cached names? Means the response time of uncached is less important...

[god_43]

so if i use these, Google will know what types of :banana::banana::banana::banana: i look at? f that noise!

[ripken204]

i've been using OpenDNS for years and i don't want google knowing everything about me, haha.

[cobra_kai]

I would much rather have google know things about me than comcast, which is my ISP.

[Pontos]

I would much rather have google know things about me than comcast, which is my ISP.
Comcast doesn't have the complete business of information on the internet, while Google is getting close to achieve that :p: (This service being a new milestone)

[AndrewZorn]

you guys dont get it, google isnt necessarily knowing everything about YOU, they arent going to decide to pull up your record one day and see what youre up to. they use your browsing STATISTICS for advertisement and search engine STATISTICS. the horror! i think google is just more ready to admit it than most others, hence the reason why they get attacked for it. anything you do on the internet can be monitored by your ISP anyway, like Pontos said. i cant believe how paranoid some people are.

[m0da]

Here is PCMag.com's benchmark results page (2nd page of article):

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2356707,00.asp

Their results, lowest to highest latency:
1. Open
2. Google
3. Default

[Calmatory]

you guys dont get it, google isnt necessarily knowing everything about YOU, they arent going to decide to pull up your record one day and see what youre up to. they use your browsing STATISTICS for advertisement and search engine STATISTICS. the horror! i think google is just more ready to admit it than most others, hence the reason why they get attacked for it. anything you do on the internet can be monitored by your ISP anyway, like Pontos said. i cant believe how paranoid some people are.

Yeah. What have these people done, or why the fear? It's not like Google could compil.... Perso... Stat.. OH WAIT!

:shakes:

Data gathering on individuals = bad.

[Jamesrt2004]

Here is PCMag.com's benchmark results page (2nd page of article):


Their results, lowest to highest latency:
1. Open
2. Google
3. Default

pretty lame they used a whole 3 services, I like that benchmark program (first one listed) it actually made a diff to me :up: im on 4.3.3.3 or something like that :D

[XS_Rich]

Tested mine last night using the benchmark posted above.

My ISP came out top on all three measures.

OpenDNS & UltraDNS swapping the next couple of spots.

Then the ntt DNS servers.

A reasonable gap, and only then did the Google DNS servers show up in about 10th place.

[CrimInalA]

8888 is even faster than my own ISP :o
I'm in Belgium , using Colt telecom DNS
8844 is just a tad slower than 8888 for me .

[Hornet331]

Not worth the change, my ISP DNS is 60% of the time faster then google and the other 40% its the same as google.. :p:

[Toysoldier]

i've been using OpenDNS for years and i don't want google knowing everything about me, haha.

What's stopping OpenDNS from collecting the exact same data about you ?

[Pyr0]

thanks for posting those DNS benchmarks guys :)
looks like I'll be sticking with my ISP's servers

[ripken204]

What's stopping OpenDNS from collecting the exact same data about you ?

they can, but at least it is not one entity having the ability to see everything that i do.

[AndrewZorn]

they can, but at least it is not one entity having the ability to see everything that i do.
this must be over my head,
because i dont understand the logic here

EDIT and that DNS benchmarking tool is awesome by the way
but it doesnt matter much for me

i wont post the entire results, but opendns and 4.2.2.1 are actually at the BOTTOM, google is somewhere in the middle
thats what happens when you are in the iraq, i guess

also it is funny to see how much different it looks when you have slow internet
my blue/green bars are about 10x longer than the red ones, looks very different than the ones posted

EDIT
changed it to the two fastest, put #2 as #1 because i googled them both and couldnt find out who the first one was, the second is SpeakEasy
i doubt the difference will be noticeable because of my ping having about a 600ms minimum

[XS_Rich]

this must be over my head,
because i dont understand the logic here

I think the point is that if you use one company for mail, another one for calendar, another one for DNS, an unrelated ISP etc., although they have all the information in total, because they don't talk to each other they can't draw the same links as if you had everything with google.

e.g. with targetted advertising, you might have a load of birthdays in your calendar, and a contacts list on your email. Someone with access to both sets of data might see that you mark the birthdays of all your clients from one particular company and start trying to sell you expensive executive gifts or something.

Plus if Google's data gets hacked / leaked, it's ALL out there. If you're using multiple companies, you're only risking one bit at a time.

[AndrewZorn]

i guess i must not be very worried about any of it
the only point that i recognize is the all-eggs-in-one-basket thing, but i dont see how has much to do with DNS. maybe separating emails and financial info or something...

i guess it all stems from the fact that i am one person out of over 6 billion, if someone really has the motivation to look up how many times i check XS every day and my amazon buying habits then they can have that information, for all i care

[randomizer]

Regardless of who your email or DNS provider is, unless the traffic is encrypted your ISP can still monitor it if they so choose. The eggs are still all in one basket in that sense. What information can Google seriously find out about you other than the web address you want? It's a DNS query... you send the address to be resolved, the server resolves it and sends the IP address back to your PC. Private information isn't needed in such a lookup. If you're really paranoid you should write a script to do continuous lookups of random websites to create "noise" around your actual browsing. You should also stop using search engines as you're giving away more statistical data there than you are via DNS lookups.

[Kingcarcas]

Well turns out speakeasy is best for me, then one from ultradns and one opendns.

[ripken204]

I think the point is that if you use one company for mail, another one for calendar, another one for DNS, an unrelated ISP etc., although they have all the information in total, because they don't talk to each other they can't draw the same links as if you had everything with google.

e.g. with targetted advertising, you might have a load of birthdays in your calendar, and a contacts list on your email. Someone with access to both sets of data might see that you mark the birthdays of all your clients from one particular company and start trying to sell you expensive executive gifts or something.

Plus if Google's data gets hacked / leaked, it's ALL out there. If you're using multiple companies, you're only risking one bit at a time.

ya, that's exactly what i mean. i use google for email, calendar. i have voice, wave, adsense and more ransom stuff.

[Glow9]

So I'm screwing around here on my router. Person on here told me how I could do it via an option on my NIC but wasn't there. So I changed my DNS on my router to 8.8.8.8 does this do this Google thing or did I just do something that does nothing for the heck of it?

[osiris999]

http://i47.tinypic.com/t9tshw.png looks like 4.2.2.5 for me still

[RejZoR]

In my case, the fastest was my ISP DNS (T-2), followed by ARNES (our academic and research network). Google came out as third and OpenDNS as last...

[randomizer]

So I'm screwing around here on my router. Person on here told me how I could do it via an option on my NIC but wasn't there. So I changed my DNS on my router to 8.8.8.8 does this do this Google thing or did I just do something that does nothing for the heck of it?

By default your NIC will use the router (the DHCP server) as its DNS, which in turn uses whatever is set in the router config.

[Glow9]

By default your NIC will use the router (the DHCP server) as its DNS, which in turn uses whatever is set in the router config.

Soooo does this mean that my comp is just using my router and no google thing, or is my computer using the google thing by default if I have my DNS as 8.8.8.8 along with any other computer thats on my network?

[randomizer]

Soooo does this mean that my comp is just using my router and no google thing, or is my computer using the google thing by default if I have my DNS as 8.8.8.8 along with any other computer thats on my network?

If your router is configured to use 8.8.8.8 and your computers are configured to obtain IP addresses and DNS addresses automatically (and they are by default), they'll all use 8.8.8.8.

[Glow9]

If your router is configured to use 8.8.8.8 and your computers are configured to obtain IP addresses and DNS addresses automatically (and they are by default), they'll all use 8.8.8.8.

lol make this easy for me :ROTF::
A) My computers are running off my router and nothing changed than before.
B) My computers now all use the google thing.

[randomizer]

lol make this easy for me :ROTF::
A) My computers are running off my router and nothing changed than before.
B) My computers now all use the google thing.

As long as you only changed the router config, B). If you really want to know for sure, open up a command prompt and run the command nslookup. It will tell you what DNS server the PC is using.

[uOpt]

Keep in mind that DNS queries do not carry the cookies that your browser does.

Google has been aggressively collecting information from those who provide it, but they never made an attempt to cross cookie deletion (e.g. via flash cookies which are a joke in itself). They also have an opt-out for some tracking features that they did not hide and didn't make hard to use.

I don't see that they will connect the DNS lookups to your browsing session via IP address, even assuming you browse from your own IP address in the first place.

A good, fast DNS server is great to have.