In my experience with many network
Internet Service Providers by so far I've encountered a lot
of DNS oddities and therefore surfing (web) and mail
slowness.
It's sometimes very irritating especially in cases, when I use my
internet over Wireless public or university wireless
networks.
In principle many of the Wireless routers which distribute the
internet especially in organizations are badly configured and the
slowness with DNS resolvings is an absolute classic.
If you haven't encountered that slowness in opening web pages when
connected from your University's canteen, whether it's fill with
people for the lunch break, then I should say you're really
lucky!
My personal experience with this bad configured devices DNS
services has been quite negative and every now and then I use to
set and use public DNS servers like
OpenDNS and
Google
DNS
Very often when I connect to a wireless network with my notebook
running Debian Linux and the internet is too slow in opening pages
I automatically set the Google or OpenDNS servers as a default DNS
IP resolving servers.
1. DNS IP addresses of Google Public DNS are:
8.8.8.7
and
8.8.8.8
2. OpenDNS Public DNS servers has the IP addresses of:
208.67.222.222
208.67.222.220
I do set up and use the upper public DNS services addresses via the
commands:
3. Set and use Google Public DNS services on my Linux
debian:~# cp -rpf /etc/resolv.conf
/etc/resolv.conf.orig
debian:~# echo "nameserver 8.8.8.7\n nameserver 8.8.8.8 \n" >
/etc/resolv.conf;
I first create backu pof my
resolv.conf under the name
resolv.conf.orig just to make sure I can revert back to my
old DNSes if I need them at some point.
If you prefer to use the OpenDNS services for some let's say
privacy reasons, you do it in the same manner as in the above
commands, you only change the IP addresses.
4. Configure and use
the OpenDNS public DNS services
debian:~# cp -rpf /etc/resolv.conf
/etc/resolv.conf.orig
debian:~# echo "nameserver 208.67.222.222\n nameserver
208.67.222.220 \n" > /etc/resolv.conf;
Of course using Public DNS services has it's disadvantages over the
domain resolving speed up advantage.
One major issue is that Public DNS services are running on a top of
a cloud and if you have red my previous article
Cloud Computing a possible threat to users privacy and system
administrator employment you might be agaist the idea of using
a services which are powered by cloud.
The other primary concern is related to your
SECURITY and a
PRIVACY by using Public DNS networks, you risk that your Public
DNS provider might use some DNS spoof techniques to mislead you and
resolve you common domain names which usually resolve to let's say
1.1.1.1 to let's say
1.5.5.10
Even though this kind of practices on a side of a public DNS
provider is not a likely scenario the possible implications of
Public DNS providers using DNS forgery to fool you about domain
names locations is a very serious issue.
As public DNS providers does contain again the good old philosophy
of cloud computing embedded in themselves and they strive to become
some kind of a standard which people might vote to adopt and use,
the future implications of a wide adoption of
Public DNS
servers might be a terrible thing on internet users
privacy!!!
Just think about a future scenario where we users of the Internet
are forced to use a number of public DNS servers in order to use
the Internet!
Usually a very huge companies are possessing the Public DNS
services and do pay for the tech equipment required for building up
the cluster clouds which provide the DNS services and therefore, if
in the short future public DNS becomes a fashion and (God forbid!)
a standard which shifts up the regular ISP DNS servers to resolve
domains to IPs then it will be terrible.
The corporations which does own the Public DNS service/s might have
a direct control over filtering and censoling information posted on
any website on the internet.
Even worser if the world decides to adopt public DNS services
somewhere in the future this means that large corporations owning
the open dns cluster or clusters will be able to check each and
every resolving made by any user on the net.
If you think closely such an information possessed by a company is
not the best thing we want.
So let me close up this article, I'm not a fan and an evangelist
who preaches the use of Public DNS services. Right on Contrary I do
honestly hate the idea behind public DNS.
Nevertheless apart from my personal opinion I'm a practical person
and using the public DNS servers every now and then when this will
accelerate my access to the internet is still an option I do
enjoy.
Maybe it's time for a free software project (a tor like), which
will provide users with an
OpenDNS alternative which will
run on hobbyist computers around the globe (just like with
tor).
What's rather funny is that the loud name
OpenDNS is a big
lie in reality
OpenDNS is not opened it's a company owned
closed source service ;)