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Google Launches Public DNS Resolver
AdmiralXyz writes "Google has announced the launch of their free DNS resolution service, called Google Public DNS. According to their blog post, Google Public DNS uses continuous record prefetching to avoid cache misses — hopefully making the service faster — and implements a variety of techniques to block spoofing attempts. They also say that (unlike an increasing number of ISPs), Google Public DNS behaves exactly according to the DNS standard, and will not redirect you to advertising in the event of a failed lookup. Very cool, but of course there are questions about Google's true motivations behind knowing every site you visit."
> They also say that (unlike an increasing number of ISPs), Google Public DNS behaves exactly according to the DNS standard.
Congratulations, this would then be the first free service that I know of which doesn't do redirect ! ;-)
I setup my own DNS but I guess it is a little overkill for the common every day user. Setting your own DNS means you have to go to the network (e.g. internet) less often because your locally hosted DNS caches the already visited sites for a TTL period of time. This is especially true if you have several computers and that they tend to visit the same sites.
Let me add that if your ISP or firewall intercepts requests to port 53, you will still be stuck with it ;-(
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
But I thought open recursive DNS servers were bad -- haven't you heard of DNS DDoS amplification attacks? Why would Google's open recursive DNS service be any better in this regard?
Follow your Euro bills at EBT
They state very bluntly that IP addresses are expunged from the logs after 48 hours, and that no data is shared with Google Accounts or other Google services. They still get to play with a lot of aggregated data, but this seems like a fairly non-evil way to do it. Good for them. http://code.google.com/speed/public-dns/faq.html#privacy
But it sure seems like they're getting more and more of my personal information lately. What I search for, where I surf to, with my Droid where I navigate to, my e-mails, my documents. WOW.
But why would one change to use Google's DNS? If you're technical enough and care about such, you're way better off setting up your own recursive DNS server.
Google is just datamining from DNS requests here, it's another source of information. At least with your own ISP you can reasonably think that theres no datamining going on (excluding US ISP's, of course, who serve ads on non-existing domains for their users anyway)
"To try it out:
Configure your network settings to use the IP addresses 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 as your DNS servers..."
Simple enough to remember which is great. Also - could this be used to circumvent some of the internet security at some workplaces where they seem to run a blacklist of specific sites?
8.8.8.8, 8.8.4.4.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
Wow the people at OpenDNS are going to be pissed by this.
Still 8.8.8.8 is a bit more memorable than 208.67.222.222
Online & Feelin' Fine
Forget everyday use, but on public wifi, I'm all about this!
...but of course there are questions about Google's true motivations behind knowing every site you visit.
No there aren't. You'd have to have been living under a rock for the past decade to have any questions about their motives. It's dead simple - they want to know what people are looking at so that they can better target people with advertising thereby increasing the value of their service. In return for offering various free services, all they ask for is some information on you so that they can better target advertising that interests _YOU_. It's not rocket science - it's just incredibly effective marketing.
but they didn't want too much brilliance all in one place.
Their they're doing there hair.
fEEL FREE TO OPT OUT AT ANY TIME.
They have a great program for that!
If I had a nickel for every time I had a nickel, I'd be richcursive!
Look.. Google's in the advertising and data aggregation business, yes. But ... there is a level of suspicion and fear directed at Google that just seems extreme. Has Google actually done something "Evil" that I missed? Or it is just paranoia? I personally think that it's much more likely that OpenDNS or my ISP would do something crazy with this sort of information than Google.
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
They don't publish own IPv6 records via this resolver :-(
The NTP pool (which probably needs even more NTP servers, btw) was recently changed so that the project's DNS servers return a list of nearest available NTP servers when queried. If you change your settings to use Google's DNS servers, the pool will now respond with a list of NTP servers close to Google's DNS servers, which may not be what you wanted.
Follow your Euro bills at EBT
Set up your own DNS server and point it at google's.
Then you can take advantage of your cache and their cache.
google could do us a great service by also making it available on some other port, that way we can get around the ISP interception of DNS requests.
So not only as memorizable, but explicitly public, whereas 4.2.2.2 and 4.2.2.1 are both technically being abused when you do that.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
RTT to my own resolver: microseconds
RTT to my ISP's resolver (Speakeasy = no redirect and such): ~21ms
RTT to Google's: 80+ms
No-brainer for me.
If you're on $garbage_DNS and you're served an advertisement/search page instead of NXDOMAIN, you (or your browser's auto-search) won't search Google. For that matter, just having something like this around will discourage $garbage_DNS.
Google cares about the Internet. It's where they make their money.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
So...
Google voice first for voice. Last week Gizmo5 for voip and now rolling out their own DNS?
Looks like all the infrastructure pieces are in place for the mass change of how cell phones are going to work.
For years I've wondered why we still have phone numbers. With address books stored on the phones to map names (hosts) to phone numbers (ip's).
With all the phones these days having decent data connections as standard, looks like we're going to get a central way of handling this.
So my phone contact will be 'Fred@Domain.com' If I send an email with that address, it gets sent to their mail. If I make a call to that address, does the DNS lookup, finds out their phone number (that we can re-configure our end to handle calling home phone or cell phone, and with location based rules on an android phone, you'd be able to automate it as you left your house, it lets the phone DNS know to call the cell phone, then as you get to your desk location, remap to office phone for non-personal calls). All possible as standard.
We're not going to get phone and choose to have a dataplan, we're going to have phones + dataplans and that's it.
telcoms industry HAVE to know this surely?
(personal wish, as calls are made to someone, there's a quick lookup for capabilities of the device you're calling, then popup the choices to make normal call, send a text, allow the webcam to work, or most importantly, present a URL to an MP3 that's YOUR ringtone, so you can set up a theme tune and as you call people, they hear your tune (as long as they've not turned that off))
Waiting for an amusing sig.
everything resolves to Google's proxies.
Really?
You, sir, are a liar.
Cue *whoosh* in 3..2.. actually, I still don't get it. Either you're trolling because you hate Google, or there's some obscure joke that I still don't understand. I really don't get how your list of crap it requires (most of which doesn't exist or doesn't apply to DNS) is funny -- are Google known for requiring random stuff like that?
I mean, they don't even touch NX:
That's more than you can say for most ISP-level resolvers.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
RTFA:
Google Public DNS stores two sets of logs: temporary and permanent. The temporary logs store the full IP address of the machine you're using. We have to do this so that we can spot potentially bad things like DDoS attacks and so we can fix problems, such as particular domains not showing up for specific users.
We delete these temporary logs within 24 to 48 hours.
In the permanent logs, we don't keep personally identifiable information or IP information. We do keep some location information (at the city/metro level) so that we can conduct debugging, analyze abuse phenomena and improve the Google Public DNS prefetching feature. 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.
So in other words, for less than two days, their DNS log, and nothing else, will know that a particular request was made from a particular IP. Other than that, they'll know that someone from your ISP, or perhaps from your whole fscking city, made that request -- maybe. I'm guessing they'll be looking at overall trends.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
disregard that, I suck cocks.
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
It's hilarious that that's modded as 'Informative'.
I seem to recall that there are a few ISPs that are threatening to block all requests to Google sites because of the bandwidth that is being used. I think it stands to reason that the reason Google is running an free DNS is so that people can still access their sites, no matter what their ISP does.
Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon what's the difference? All steal money from devs and control with walled gardens.
I will still use my free http://www.opendns.com/ servers. The only redirect you get is a search page with is this what you mean. Other than that it will still try and get you where you want to be while also blocking a variety of sites, by your own choosing.
Very cool, but of course there are questions about Google's true motivations behind knowing every site you visit.
Nonsense.
They want to cut the ISPs and other DNS providers out of their (dishonest) ad revenue streams. For a lot of competitors, this is virtually the only straw left (AOL, anyone? I know at least in Germany if they hadn't forced the marketing of the "Alice" ISP to add such a DNS-misdirect, their portal and search space would be able to count its visits in "hits per hour").
It hurts their competitors while giving Google an image plus. And the amount of overhead and traffic is neglectable if you already operate on the scale that Google does.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
"Google Public DNS stores two sets of logs: temporary and permanent. The temporary logs store the full IP address of the machine you're using," the company said. "We have to do this so that we can spot potentially bad things like DDoS attacks and so we can fix problems, such as particular domains not showing up for specific users. We delete these temporary logs within 24 to 48 hours.
"In the permanent logs, we don't keep personally identifiable information or IP information. We do keep some location information (at the city/metro level) so that we can conduct debugging, analyze abuse phenomena and improve the Google Public DNS prefetching feature. 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."
Except that Google only stores records for 24-48 hours and then deletes them and does not share the data with its ads department or any other Google services.
http://www.chaotickingdoms.com
Technically, they only get to track the sites that you access by domain name. You can always punch an IP address in and circumvent the DNS system. Start memorizing those porn IPs now!
I just tried it and it's *WAY* faster than my ISP - web pages start loading a couple of seconds sooner than before.
No sig today...
You can opt-out of the Comcast rerouting.
https://dns-opt-out.comcast.net/
It's not cookie-based either, it actually disables it for your cablemodem's MAC address.
Of course nobody reads the FAQ! If people read the FAQ, the Questions wouldn't be so Frequently Asked.
I guess for me it's clear: I'll skip it for now.
No, but we're smart enough to realize that no one is going to pay out of pocket to provide all the services that Google does for free with no revenue model at all, not even to pay for the infrastructure servers and network necessary to do it.
I'll make you a deal. Multi-billionaire technology philanthropist that you seem to be, you set up a company to compete with Google, one that provides all that they do and that has exactly zero sources of revenue, and I'll willingly become your fanboy.
The practical situation is that there ain't no such thing as a free lunch. When Google came along, we were headed towards every web site--especially search engines and directories--pushing out more and more pop-ups, pop-unders, interstitials, graphics-heavy, annoying ads, and they changed that. God forbid any of them actually contribute back to the community in the form of numerous open source projects and free services.
Google changed all that by providing a much more customer-friendly "less is more" philosophy, and their customers have supported their efforts in a very free market-friendly way. So while you can take potshots at targeted advertising if you want, I honestly can't think of a less obtrusive and relatively harmless revenue model that can support all that Google does and how much they are contributing to advancing technology.
While I'd love for someone to volunteer to do all that Google does without making money for it, given that that's not going to happen, yeah, targeted advertising is about the least annoying way I can think of to get the bills paid and continue providing service.
For those too lazy to run whois:
...
...
spliffy@localhost:~$ whois gtei.net
Registrant:
Verizon Trademark Services LLC
Verizon Trademark Services LLC
1320 North Court House Road
Arlington VA 22201
US
domainlegalcontact@verizon.com +1.7033513164 Fax: +1.7033513669
Google is datamining everywhere and everything already.
When I first read about this, I immediately thought about datamining. But after another second, I figured that I would prefer Google to have this information than Verizon (where my caching DNS server currently forwards to). It is true that Google is better at datamining, but do keep in mind that whoever is providing your DNS service has the information about your DNS requests.
Another difference between Google and your ISP is that your ISP knows who you are from your IP address. So they can link DNS resolution requests to specific, named, customers. Google can't do that directly.
Prime numbers are exactly what Alan Greenspan says they are -S. Minsky
"So in other words, for less than two days, their DNS log, and nothing else, will know that a particular request was made from a particular IP."
So they say. You have more than their word for that?
Oh right. A big US corporation would never lie, even in the service of compliance with national security and law enforcement directives which require them to.
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
Besides 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 it looks like there's 4.3.2.1
$ whois 4.3.2.1
Level 3 Communications, Inc. LVLT-ORG-4-8 (NET-4-0-0-0-1)
4.0.0.0 - 4.255.255.255
Google Incorporated LVLT-GOOGL-1-4-3-2 (NET-4-3-2-0-1)
4.3.2.0 - 4.3.2.255
In case anyone missed the reference
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
David Ulevitch, Founder of OpenDNS blogs on the issue.
Candle burns its brightest in the dark