Cloudflare created the fastest public DNS beating Google and OpenDNS

Cloudflare launched a DNS resolver this month. Cloudflare says that with this launch they are fixing the foundation of the Internet. The public DNS resolver is faster, more secure and privacy-centric. The DNS IP addresses are 1.1.1.1 and 1.0.0.1.

1.1.1.1 and 1.0.0.1, the Cloudflare DNS resolvers use Cloudflare´s global network and Cloudflare says they want to “operate the fastest public resolver on the planet while raising the standard of privacy protections for users.”

What DNS does?

The DNS is the service that translates a domain name into an IP address where a website is hosted. Users can set up a specific DNS on the settings of their connection (on mobile phones, tablets, laptops, etc). Here how to set up the DNS. When a DNS Server resolves a domain name, a query travels from the web browser to a recursive DNS service. If the DNS record is not in the service’s local cache, the recursor will query the authoritative DNS hierarchy to find the IP address information you are looking for. The recursor is the part that DNS resolver, 1.1.1.1 plays.

Faster than Google and OpenDNS

Google also has a public DNS (8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 for IPv4 service, and 2001:4860:4860::8888 and 2001:4860:4860::8844 for IPv6 access), but Cloudflare is faster than Google, and faster than OpenDNS (part of Cisco) and Quad9.

Here the results of Cloudflare vs. Google vs. OpenDNS vs. Quad9 vs. Neustar vs. Norton vs. SafeDNS vs. Verisign vs. Comodo vs. Yandex (by DNSPerf):

The reason to be faster is that instead of relying on a centralized cache, Cloudflare DNS resolver, 1.1.1.1, uses a distributed cache.

Privacy

By default, DNS is usually slow and insecure. The ISPs (Internet Service Providers), and anyone else listening in on the Internet, can see every site you visit and every app you use — even if their content is encrypted.

Cloudflare, with their public DNS 1.1.1.1,  is using DNS Query Name Minimisation, which reduces the information leaked to intermediary DNS servers. Cloudflare says is the only one doing that at the moment.