Google has just launched a DNS service similar to OpenDNS, which I’ve written about previously. The service, dubbed “Google Public DNS“, aims to make domain name lookups (i.e. “What does www.google.com mean?”) faster, and is one of the steps in their plan to make the internet faster — or taking control of it, depending on how dramatic you want to sound.
You can test it by setting your computer or router’s DNS settings to the following DNS server IP addresses:
For instructions, see the Google Public DNS configuration instructions.
Unlike OpenDNS, which supports itself by providing advertisement-powered search pages for unresolved queries, Google promises that it will never do any form of redirection. A little strange, considering Google runs the largest advertisement service on the planet, but perhaps they genuinely just do want to make the internet faster.
In my tests, Google Public DNS had a significantly faster response time than OpenDNS from my location in Stockholm, Sweden (Europe). If you’d like to find out which DNS servers are right for you, Google also recently released a DNS server benchmark tool called namebench, which tells you just that, factoring in all of the major public DNS services as well as regional ISP DNS servers.
Note that you should never use DNS servers that you don’t trust. DNS providers have full control over what ‘google.com’, ‘gmail.com’, etc. mean to your machine, and can redirect connections to these websites to malicious websites without your knowledge.
There’s a wide variety of things that will limit your online experience, a pretty common problem is simply lack of download and upload bandwidth, or hogging of same – but there’s another thing: DNS latency. OpenDNS, a service run by the founder of EveryDNS, might be just what you need.
Every time you want to access sites via their hostmasks, e.g. ‘www.google.com’ or ‘www.diggdot.us’, rather than their actual ‘names’ (IP addresses), e.g. 64.233.187.99, 64.71.156.11 – a query is sent to your DNS server asking, “What is Google.com?” – and it’s surprising how much slower the page load time can become because of that initial query, regardless of what connection you might have. Some ISP DNS servers have very poor respond times, ultimately leading to slower browsing, but fortunately there’s a free alternative.
If you use OpenDNS, you let their dedicated servers in various locations respond to your DNS requests instead of your ISP, and there’s a good chance they’ll respond a hell of a lot faster.
If you’re having applications hang with the indication that they’re looking for some host, e.g. Firefox saying “Looking for www.google.com…”, you should really try this out.
Other bonuses include automatic spelling correction, e.g. www.craigslist.og will take you to the .org site – Their server also blocks DNS requests to known phishing sites so your credit card information won’t be stolen.
Try changing your DNS server settings on either your computer or router to the following IP addresses (the OpenDNS servers) and check if it has a positive effect – you don’t need a login, specific operating system or anything like so, it works everywhere:
- 208.67.222.222
- 208.67.220.220
You might be surprised.
For more information, visit www.opendns.com.
