With it being such an easy way to track who goes where, I'm surprised Google is just getting into this now.

Great IP addresses though, I suspect a lot of network admins will be using them to test since they're so easy to remember.

I'm not sure I understand how to use this.
As a webmaster owning domain names and web host account, should I use this ?
Currently all my domains use dns of my host.

As a web surfer, should I use it and how ?

Thanks

You computer already silently uses the services of a DNS server at your ISP when you browse the web. In your router you likely have "get settings automatically" selected. This new service is an alternative DNS service that you could use. To use it, you manually edit the router configuration to use the specified IP addresses instead of the "automatic" settings.

Or you can do it from your Network Connections on your PC.

Would this really benefit anyone besides Google?

Reading their gumph, they claim that having a large, common caching database will mean faster performance for all, but is it really worth the slight boost in performance in exchange for giving Google even more of your data?

Thanks for answers.
Could I really gain speed over my ISPs dns ? Isn't my access to my isp's dns anyway faster than anything else since there is less travel from me to my isp?

Google claim that their service will attempt to send users to their geographically closest data centre.

But I still reckon it's wisest to just stick with your own ISP's DNS offering, unless you know what you're doing.

The big advantage I see to Google's system is for those of us with ISP's that have decided to hijack DNS errors and send them to their own error page.

Charter, my ISP does it, and even though I've opted out, if I mis-type a domain, they forward me to their own "error" page which means I have no idea what my error was and I have to re-type the domain again.

I just switched to Google's DNS and they don't hijack the DNS error's which is the ONLY reason I thought about trying their service.

Don't particularly like giving them additional info, but the DNS hijacking pisses me off even more at the moment. :)

I switched from my ISP's DNS to OpenDNS to avoid 404 redirection, which messes up link checking. I'll have to give Google DNS a try, might be faster.

is this anything to do with something new with their toolbar I've noticed over the last month or so...which is that you get this:

Oops! This link appears to be broken.

with a "Google Toolbar" logo on, when you try to go to a site that doesn't exist. The problem is, often, when you refresh the page, the link is actually fine. This happens to me 1-2 times every single day.

wow, I just switched my DNS from FIOS to Google and it actually seems to be speeding up the "time to first byte" indicating their large cache actually does help speed up browsing. Pretty cool. BTW everyone, if you're worried about them tracking you don't use their toolbar either, this is no different, perhaps more efficient...

Reading their gumph, they claim that having a large, common caching database will mean faster performance for all, but is it really worth the slight boost in performance in exchange for giving Google even more of your data?

exactly, now no matter what site you type in, where you go, or what you do...they'll know it even if you don't use their search engine.

oh but its fun friendly and free - so give it a try we are the nice guys remember! *fake smile*

if i need faster dns i'll use opendns.

The information that Google has on how to configure your router [code.google.com...]

states that some I.S.P.s hard code their D.N.S. server into their equipment. I notice that on my I.S.P. I can change it to Google DNS, save and write it to flash etc. But if we re-boot the router the I.S.P.s D.N.S. is rewritten into the router.

Thus some folks will have to do this on each computer.

In our case we use a cache server and updated it with the Google D.N.S. and it works great so far.

I don't know about you but my ISP's DNS servers are closer to me than any Google server. I have no DNS complaints.

Now if they were offering free DNS services for webmasters, I'd give it some serious thought.

p.s. When will Google have enough or too much of my data?

Configure your network settings to use the IP addresses 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 as your DNS servers

source [code.google.com]

What a memorable IP indeed. and I can type it with one hand and only 7 keystrokes. much better than my own IP which I can't remember, ever. I always have to look it up.

Makes perfect sense to me. They're already crawling the web and are aware of 301's etc. So this is potentially one way to solve the redirect problem and send the user straight to what they actually wanted.

Very cool IP addy indeed ;)

Very useful as a back up service too - we sometimes get problems with our ISPs lookup servers and actually started running a backup ourselves.

It would also provide a good test site for checking DNS entry change propagation.

Everything is so fast today, it's hard to tell if this made a difference.

When Internet "runs out" of domains, we are gonna get into vanity IP market :)

"Visit us at 9.9.9.9"

Great google will have more sensitive user data! </sarcasm>

Actually it "breaks" most of the CDN services, resolving to far away nodes

A couple of times I was paid $20 and $25 to fill out a survey. How much Google pays if I was to use this service?

Wow. This is too funny. A few years ago, the paranoia level was so high regarding the evil Patriot Act spying.

Yet, people immediately allow Google to act as their DNS provider providing yet another monitoring facet to their search, email, desktop, advertisements, analytics, 100 year cookies providing volumes of personally identified tracking.

Like we have no enough of Google.

Sounds like they know how to provide a very secure DNS.

It also sounds like a way that they can determine the true popularity of a site (but not individual pages) for the purpose of page rankings - which can be good or bad, depending on the site. If a site is less popular than they think it should be, they might give it worse rankings in search results.

Just a random thught

Here in Thailand, I have really $#!tty issues with DNS, so I regularly make use of alternatives to my ISP... I'll sure be adding this to my list of alternatives.

They need to work on their anycasting. Certainly from where I am OpenDNS (which I have used for years) has half the ping times of the Google addresses.

Just tested the ping times from a few of my servers in various cities and countries. In all cases (except Atlanta) OpenDNS was much faster.

I don't think they're really going to expect many to switch their settings (most people have no idea they can change the DNS).

What Google is building this for is for the default DNS in Chrome, Google OS, Android, to gather yet more date from those users.

If you're going to change your DNS, OpenDNS is still a much better choice (more features as well).

I think a Google DNS server is a great idea and it gives people alternatives to using their ISP.

For example, when I mis-type an address in my PS3 browser, I get these Yahoo! sponsored listings and really crappy search results from my ISP here in Germany. It got to be really annoying so I plan to use these alternatives in my PS3 config :)

I've been testing it for a couple of hours... and I'm getting better results with DNS Advantage, especially with my server in Singapore... so I switched back again already.