Public DNS
Categories: Work
Written By: Rene Schmidt
Lately there has been a lot of hassle in Germany regarding Internet censorship via DNS blocking. As a reaction, several groups have set up public DNS resolvers that do not block IPs. CCC has compiled a small list with such servers.
Either I am doing something wrong or many of resolvers listed are slow or unresponsive. Foebud-DNS for example regularly responds after several thousand milliseconds, if at all. Even though providing uncensored public DNS is very commendable, this is simply unusable.
Google has just made their own public DNS resolvers 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 available. A very clever move that makes Google a bit less dependent on ISP infrastructure. And look at them IP addresses… They are as simple as they can get. Depite the outcry of privacy groups and advocates one must admit this is very, very clever. Even skeptics like me are tempted to use Google resolvers just out of laziness… :) It is funny and scary at the same time.
BTW, OpenNIC has some decent public DNS resolvers available. I think I will use one of them and 8.8.8.8 as a backup.
