Google Public DNS

http://code.google.com/speed/public-dns/

by dfreidin • 17 years ago

83 45 17 years ago

code.google.com

I tested this and it is consistently offering better results than OpenDNS and 4.2.2.2. The results are here http://www.manu-j.com/blog/opendns-alternative-google-dns-ro...

How are the results from inside US ?

known• 17 years ago

They are better than 4.2.2.2 in USA.

eli2• 17 years ago

Neat. They even got memorable IP addresses.

cscotta• 17 years ago

It's an interesting idea, but based on some early tests it looks like a losing bet to me.

My ping from a dedicated 15mb Qwest circuit to 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 is between 57ms and 75ms. However, cached DNS resolutions run at around 12ms from our default DNS servers. Even uncached resolutions are still way faster than the round-trip to Google.

Google Public DNS might be worth it if every single one of your DNS queries would result in a cache miss, but otherwise I don't see the performance improvement Google is gunning for.

That said, it is nice to have a public option.

windsurfer• 17 years ago

That's funny. I'm with Rogers in Canada, and their DNS requests can take 2000 ms on a normal day.

sp332• 17 years ago

That's not funny.

mrtron• 17 years ago

Also on Rogers - and get a noticeable improvement.

jokergd• 17 years ago

funny enough, I get an average of 8ms ping from 8.8.8.8 (9 hops) from my co-lo server

quite happy with that

chrisbolt• 17 years ago

One of the problems with using 'public' DNS servers like Google and OpenDNS is that content delivery networks return the IPs of their nodes that are closest to your DNS servers based on the assumption that you are on the same network as your DNS servers.

I just did a comparison and I am 10ms away from the Akamai node returned by my ISP's DNS servers, 88ms away from the node returned by Google Public DNS, and 20ms away from the node returned by OpenDNS. Even if DNS is faster, it may make everything else slower...

quellhorst• 17 years ago

Google could fix that by setting up relationships with the big CDNs so that they could resolve to the closest locations for you.

InclinedPlane• 17 years ago

Google is one of the biggest CDNs, so maybe they'll start doing that on their own.

jiaaro• 17 years ago

That may be true...

but I am willing to sacrifice a few hundred ms to avoid the several seconds of frustration when typing 'gmail' into the firefox address bar gets me redirected to some stupid ass ISP specific SERPs page =D

mechanical_fish• 17 years ago

Do you have any idea how confused I was the first time that happened? An absolutely terrible user experience.

amalcon• 17 years ago

The other alternative is to just run your own instance of bind (or dnscache if that's what you prefer). CDN content will usually perform better, but non-CDN content will often lose a few ms because you usually won't have very much in cache. As a bonus, you can perform some stupid LAN tricks.

bgurupra• 17 years ago

if on windows how do I measure what you just measured?

mey• 17 years ago

Open a command prompt, launch nslookup to do the DNS queries. Once nslookup type server <ip> in the console to switch dns provider, and then just type the host name to have it looked up.

Use a second window to ping the resulting ip addresses.

edit: these instructions are also valid on linux/freebsd and should also work on OSX

jasonwatkinspdx2• 17 years ago

Anycast mitigates this several ways.

First, modern CDN's can use anycast (example bitgravity) to control in detail which content server a given user connects too. Second, a CDN operator can anycast it's authority servers to minimize time spent in recursive dns lookups (I believe akamai uses a combination similar to this).

Alternately, a 3rd party dns operator can use anycast to control which resolver a given user uses, ensuring that the resolver is close to the user on the internet. Since google's nameservers are associated with hostnames of the form any-in-XXXX.1e100.net I'd assume they're anycast already or will be in the future.

lsb2• 17 years ago

Phone support!

  Google Public DNS telephone support
  877-590-4367 in the U.S.
  770-200-1201 outside the U.S.

I wonder if this will be a trend.

kirubakaran• 17 years ago

Just an automated dude telling you what you already know or can find easily on the web. You can't reach a human at that number, at least for now.

todd3834• 17 years ago

Now Google can make cash off typo domains by turning it into a Google search and hopefully earning some sponsor link clicks. Not a bad idea. I wonder if they are going to record requested URLs so they know which ones have high traffic to spider more often... I can see a lot of reasons why Google would want to offer this.

moon_of_moon3• 17 years ago

More like record every URL you visit, and use the content of those websites to determine intent, and then target ads accordingly.

sgk284• 17 years ago

Eh, I don't know if they'll be able to do that too effectively because of NAT and whatnot, but they can certainly use this information in their PageRank calculation. Knowing what pages people visit is an even bigger vote of confidence for the site than seeing how many pages link to it.

DrewHintz• 17 years ago

"If you issue a query for a domain name that does not exist, Google Public DNS always returns an NXDOMAIN record, as per the DNS protocol standards." http://code.google.com/speed/public-dns/faq.html#nxdomains

(Disclaimer - I'm a Google employee, I didn't work on this and my opinions are my own.)

eli2• 17 years ago

In addition to speeding up the internet for everyone, there's a specific benefit to google: http://code.google.com/speed/public-dns/privacy.html

They can crunch the data on queries and infer which sites are popular (and in what geographic regions they're popular).

Subgun2• 17 years ago

More data mining by google under the guise of global awesomeness.

The point most people miss is that all of your habits and information are under one roof and only need one subpoena to get your entire electronic life on DVD. This just adds to what they already know about your searching, emailing , communicating and spending.

conover• 17 years ago

We don't correlate or combine your information from these logs with any other log data that Google might have about your use of other services, such as data from Web Search and data from advertising on the Google content network. After keeping this data for two weeks, we randomly sample a small subset for permanent storage.

It sounds like a good faith effort aimed at speeding things up to me.

lsb2• 17 years ago

Just to be fair, 25% is a small subset, and if all the chrome installations use it as their default DNS, they'd have quite a lot of data.

wgj2• 17 years ago

The Google product manager responded to TechCrunch saying "no blocking, hijacking, or filtering" and responded on privacy with "Collected data includes IP address (up to 48 hours, to detect malicious behavior against the service), ISP information and geographic information (2 weeks each). The data is not correlated with your Google account in any way."

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/12/03/google-dns-opendns/

storborg• 17 years ago

It may not be correlated, but that doesn't mean that Google isn't getting a ton of commercial benefit from this data. It's like having your own Alexa/Quantcast, but in realtime, and with much better granularity.

nuggien• 17 years ago

Yea, because your ISP totally wouldn't do the same thing.

Subgun2• 17 years ago

No it wouldn't since I use my own DNS. Even if I did not it would not produce the same amount of data in one fell swoop.

Tichy• 17 years ago

I suppose the ISP can do that anyway, no matter what you do. Even if you use Google DNS, your ISP can still know where you surf to.

carl_• 17 years ago

OpenDNS on GoogleDNS is worth a read:

http://blog.opendns.com/2009/12/03/opendns-google-dns/

chrischen2• 17 years ago

I always hated the redirection my ISP's DNS and OpenDNS forces. Every time I make a typo, i have to completely retype the URL because they redirect me...

MoeDrippins• 17 years ago

I've used OpenDNS since they became publicly known and have never gotten a redirect that I can remember. Did I configure that somehow?

chrischen2• 17 years ago

You don't get a page of search results?

wglb• 17 years ago

Try a typo or a completely incorrect domain name.

Mathnerd314• 17 years ago

Next up: Google Public ISP

(vertical integration)

Google Public DNS

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