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Cloudfare, Quad9, Google, OPEN - the DNS wars!

Space Lynx

Space Lynx

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The big difference for me was when I switched from my ISP DNS to Google DNS. After that, I've tried Norton DNS (I think it's called ConnectSafe now), OpenDNS and Quad9. In general I don't feel that my internet experience has improved or worsened when switching between those well-known DNS services.

If I were to choose one for a work environment, I'd go with Norton DNS, since they block malicious sites but also can block pornography and other contents that may not be safe (like file sharing services) or not family friendly. At the very least the chance of an employee carelessly browsing the Web and infecting the network with some kind of malware is lower that way.

At home, I use Quad9 or Google DNS. I'll give Cloudflare DNS a try, though.
 
windwhirl said:
The big difference for me was when I switched from my ISP DNS to Google DNS. After that, I've tried Norton DNS (I think it's called ConnectSafe now), OpenDNS and Quad9. In general I don't feel that my internet experience has improved or worsened when switching between those well-known DNS services.

If I were to choose one for a work environment, I'd go with Norton DNS, since they block malicious sites but also can block pornography and other contents that may not be safe (like file sharing services) or not family friendly. At the very least the chance of an employee carelessly browsing the Web and infecting the network with some kind of malware is lower that way.

At home, I use Quad9 or Google DNS. I'll give Cloudflare DNS a try, though.
Click to expand...

Same, going to give Cloudfare a shot. run speedtest ookla, see if it improves ping at all. not sure if thats a good way to measure or not
 
I mean, I don't know everything about it, but they do promise absolute privacy with regular external revisions to prove they are really doing what they say they are doing.

There are also other options like OpenNIC which is DNS service run by nodes made up of casual users, similar to how TOR operates. It's full yindependent and not owned by any mega corporation. But I have no clue if individual nodes could be abused to harvest user data.
 
RejZoR said:
but they do promise absolute privacy
Click to expand...
Umm, no they don't. They can't! When connecting to an ISP, that ISP can, if they want, track everything going through their servers. Using an alternative DNS server does NOT mean privacy is absolute.

All 1.1.1.1/CloudFlare promises is that they will not collect and sell the data going through their servers - which is still a very good thing.

As for CloudFlare improving performance, it is likely you will not notice any with sites you visit regularly after the first visit. For new sites, you might notice your "initial" contact (query) may load the first page quicker, but once a connection is established, any perceived performance boosts are likely to be from the placebo affect.

That said, I note on dnsperf, 1.1.1.1 has the worst uptime/quality rating of them all - >93%. That's no good. And it is >90% when you narrow the field to North America only. :(

All I can say at this point is I configured my router to use 1.1.1.1 and 1.0.0.1 when the announcement came out on the 1st and I have had no problems.
 
a) I literally never stated that using alternate DNS servers makes you invisible or private as whole. What I was saying is that THEIR SERVICE is providing that.

b) Cloudflare DNS service was just launched. Of course it has the worst quality rating. It's a new service. Try looking it's history for few months back. Cloudflare is not even listed. So, of course the data is incomplete or shows lower quality than some other that has been running for years.
 
I know you know what you said is what you think you said. But what you think you said is not really what you said! :rolleyes: :D

"I literally never stated" you said anything! I only made further comments based on what you said. There's really no need to take personal offense when someone comments further on your comments. Nobody was ruffling your feathers.

But since you did get all riled up, all they promised about "THEIR SERVICE" is that they will never sell our data or use it to target ads. And they will not log our IP addresses. And indeed, those are great claims.
RejZoR said:
b) Cloudflare DNS service was just launched. Of course it has the worst quality rating.
Click to expand...
That is not a logical or valid conclusion. The quality has NOTHING to do with the start date. Quality, in this case, is the percentage of "uptime" since it was initially launched. If it was launched 24 hours ago and had 0 minutes downtime, that would earn a 100% quality rating. But if in the last 24 hours, it crashed and was down for over 2 hours, it would have ~90% score.

So the fact it was launched a few days ago (lets say 4 days) and has a 90% quality score in North America, that indicates it was down more than 13 hours out of those 96! :( Stumbling out of the gate does not win races. But you are right in that to be fair, we need to see how they do over the next few months.

Having said all that, this is not really a new DNS resolving service. It has been around for several years. Note you even mention it in your 2014 blog! This is really just a policy change.
 
I mean, I don't know everything about it, but they do promise absolute privacy with regular external revisions to prove they are really doing what they say they are doing.
Click to expand...

This is what I said. I think it says it clearly enough. I think it's obvious that I'm saying this for their particular service and not entire chain of connection from user to the content.
 
Let's not derail this thread because we want to argue the usual "I know more than you do" topic:slap:
 
Just a quick update everyone, I switched from Quad9 to CloudFare about 1-2 weeks ago, and everything has been rock solid, DNS Leak, IP Leak, What is my IP, etc very solid - not showing my location at all. I am still using a VPN though because I refuse to give my browsing habits for free to ATT so that they can profit off of the data sell. :)
 
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