Google recently launched a new Public DNS resolution service. I’m very excited to see this.. the most commonly-used public resolver up until now has been OpenDNS, which works fairly well, but has some features that I do not likely — namely, it will (by default) redirect any requests for non-existing domains to a host on their network, which will then reply to web pages with a pretty “This doesn’t exist” page. However, this can cause havoc for other services, such as SMTP. They will also attempt to auto-correct mistyped domains, which is handy, but just gives me the creeps. All of this can be disabled, but to do that, you have to sign up for an account with them, and register whatever IP you happen to be on. Pain in the rear. And it also gives them the ability to track your queries to a username, although you can ‘disable’ that feature too.
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I did some quick tests against Google’s service, and it looks great so far – excellent response times, and not doing any of the “naughty stuff”. It seems that the “naughty stuff” was actually one of the things they wanted to prevent, which I completely agree with.
If you’ve been beta testing this or trying it out since the announcement, let me know how it’s going for you!
Big fan here… I have always been suspicious about OpenDNS. Google’s service does respond pretty quickly, so I’m sold.
Pardon me, but if you think google doesn’t plan to do “naughty stuff” then I have a nice bridge to sell you. OpenDNS was upfront about what they were doing : they make money by redirecting mis-typed domains. Google, on the other hand, fully intends to sell your soul to the devil without even informing you that yes, this *will* be a binding contract under the new laws which they have conveniently purchased.
Welcome to the USA, 2012 Edition.
Nice! :) While it may or may not be true that they intend to sell our souls to the devil, I still prefer their route (unmangled DNS) over OpenDNS’s, even though OpenDNS does indeed clearly tell you what they are going to do. Google does also clearly state what they are (or are not) doing with the DNS traffic: https://developers.google.com/speed/public-dns/faq#resolvers