Re:4.2.2.2: The story behind a DNS legend
by tptacek on Wednesday April 21, 2010 @12:54PM
(#1282660)
Instead of hunting for a public DNS server to use, you can just run your own. djbdns, for instance, comes "out-of-the-box" with a working cache. This puts some marginal extra load on the DNS roots, and so it's probably not a great idea for Microsoft to build it in as the Windows 7 default, but it's perfectly fine for one-offs.
In some limited testing, I find Google to be faster than 4.2.2.2, both to be faster than OpenDNS (which you shouldn't use, because they suppress NXDOMAIN), a local cache to be competitive with OpenDNS, and all of these options to be faster than AT&T's DNS, which is simply appalling.
(I test with nsping, which is a goofy program I wrote in the mid-'90s to test the resolvers at an ISP I helped run).
Re:4.2.2.2: The story behind a DNS legend
by fragmede on Wednesday April 21, 2010 @03:12PM
(#1283052)
but only for a static ip. If you use OpenDNS on your laptop, and go use coffee shop wifi, unless someone else has disabled NXDOMAIN from that IP, you will get their NXDOMAIN landing/redirect page instead.
Which limits its usefulness to desktop systems on a static IP.
Re:4.2.2.2: The story behind a DNS legend
by Zak on Wednesday April 21, 2010 @11:53AM
(#1282493)
Your ISP's DNS servers are the best choice for use as your DNS servers.
In theory, yes. Your ISP is obligated to provide them, and they're probably very close on the network. In practice, I've seen shockingly slow DNS on fairly high-speed internet connections. Switching to 8.8.8.8 or 4.2.2.2 on those connections drastically improved web browsing.
Re:4.2.2.2: The story behind a DNS legend
by rg3 on Wednesday April 21, 2010 @02:05PM
(#1282866)
While not terribly slow, I changed from my ISP's DNS servers to the Google ones because they occasionally don't work. When they work they are pretty fast. However, from time to time they were unresponsive. Sometimes that didn't happen for days, and sometimes they were unresponsive for 30-second bursts several times an hour, and then you couldn't browse the web or check your email.
I changed to 8.8.8.8 and waited to see if that was the problem. Since I changed the problem hasn't reappeared, so I keep using 8.8.8.8. I'm no friend of giving Google all my data, but the privacy policy on their DNS servers is quite clear. They don't use the data to correlate it with anything and only cache it for some times for technical reasons, whiping it afterwards. It's fair and doesn't redirect you for failed queries.
Re:4.2.2.2: The story behind a DNS legend
by retube on Wednesday April 21, 2010 @12:39PM
(#1282631)
Yes, agreed. I'm on BT Business and their DNS is terrible. With normal browsing the slowest part of a page load was the DNS look up. Doing anything vaguely automated - even when being nice - would result in loads of timeouts. I've since switched to openDNS (free, non-member) and it's been excellent.
Re:4.2.2.2: The story behind a DNS legend
by amvp on Thursday April 22, 2010 @03:39AM
(#1284417)
I recommend GRC's DNS benchmark. http://www.grc.com/dns/benchmark.htm - which lets you compare a range of publicly available dns servers, and measures their responsiveness. 8.8.8.8 or 4.2.2.2 maybe easy to remember, but depending where you are on the planet, they aren't necessarily the fastest.
Re:4.2.2.2: The story behind a DNS legend
by ryanpetrich on Wednesday April 21, 2010 @05:27PM
(#1283271)
Shaw's DNS here in Edmonton is completely down at least a few hours a week; when it is up, it's slow. OpenDNS/Google/4.2.2.2 are both more reliable and faster
Re:4.2.2.2: The story behind a DNS legend
by Zak on Wednesday April 21, 2010 @06:32PM
(#1283401)
From a legal point of view, it would be fairly easy to make a case that it's implied when you sell internet access.
From a business point of view, failure to provide DNS would appear no different from an outage to the vast majority of users. An ISP that didn't provide DNS would be out of business in very short order.
Re:4.2.2.2: The story behind a DNS legend
by tuacker on Wednesday April 21, 2010 @02:50PM
(#1283007)
For everyone interested to change their DNS check out http://code.google.com/p/namebench/
For me 8.8.4.4 and others are faster and work better then the one provided by my ISP, at least it feels that way.
Re:4.2.2.2: The story behind a DNS legend
by ramchip on Wednesday April 21, 2010 @11:09AM
(#1282356)
John Hawkinson had set aside 4.2/16 ("under the label "Numerology" since he had the wisdom to see that the numbers in themselves could be valuable").
My opinion is that among the reasons it is so well known are that it was designed from the very beginning to be memorable, and they folks setting up this service had the foresight to realize that having it on an easy IP was valuable.
I don't agree with the author's idea that an easy IP address is especially valuable. They're not making any money when technicians use their service because the IP is memorable...
Re:4.2.2.2: The story behind a DNS legend
by aw3c2 on Wednesday April 21, 2010 @11:39AM
(#1282443)
I am very very sure Google does use the data coming to their DNS for statistical analysis etc. If it is your intend to see what people visit, DNS is a highly valuable resource and an easy IP might make people use yours.
Re:4.2.2.2: The story behind a DNS legend
by ab9 on Wednesday April 21, 2010 @11:23AM
(#1282383)
Yes, it's hard to imagine that Level 3 has made much money from that IP address. But that doesn't mean memorable IP addresses aren't, in general, valuable.
4.2.2.2 could still be considered "valuable" because it's used as a public service for the Internet community, and its memorability increases the value of that service. And Google apparently thinks it can make money from the data it collects on its 8.8.8.8 nameserver; do you think that project would be just as valuable to Google if it were 216.44.159.113 instead?
Re:4.2.2.2: The story behind a DNS legend
by e1ven on Wednesday April 21, 2010 @12:06PM
(#1282549)
To each their own, I suppose, but I enjoyed this story quite a bit. A bit like the Fast inverse square root story, or the Control-Alt-Delete stories, it's fun to see the origin of interesting and neat things, even if they are somewhat predictable.
I've been using this server as a ping and DNS test for at least 5-6 years, so it's great to hear more about it.
Re:4.2.2.2: The story behind a DNS legend
by sjf on Wednesday April 21, 2010 @11:05AM
(#1282346)
Agreed, I was hoping for more dramatic/unexpected/insightful story than 'we picked an easy to remember number and it turned out to be too much effort to restrict access to the public'.
In some limited testing, I find Google to be faster than 4.2.2.2, both to be faster than OpenDNS (which you shouldn't use, because they suppress NXDOMAIN), a local cache to be competitive with OpenDNS, and all of these options to be faster than AT&T's DNS, which is simply appalling.
(I test with nsping, which is a goofy program I wrote in the mid-'90s to test the resolvers at an ISP I helped run).
Which limits its usefulness to desktop systems on a static IP.
In theory, yes. Your ISP is obligated to provide them, and they're probably very close on the network. In practice, I've seen shockingly slow DNS on fairly high-speed internet connections. Switching to 8.8.8.8 or 4.2.2.2 on those connections drastically improved web browsing.
I changed to 8.8.8.8 and waited to see if that was the problem. Since I changed the problem hasn't reappeared, so I keep using 8.8.8.8. I'm no friend of giving Google all my data, but the privacy policy on their DNS servers is quite clear. They don't use the data to correlate it with anything and only cache it for some times for technical reasons, whiping it afterwards. It's fair and doesn't redirect you for failed queries.
From a business point of view, failure to provide DNS would appear no different from an outage to the vast majority of users. An ISP that didn't provide DNS would be out of business in very short order.
If we aren't supposed to be using 4.2.2.2 what's another option than 8.8.8.8 or opendns?
People always seem to forget this point.
My opinion is that among the reasons it is so well known are that it was designed from the very beginning to be memorable, and they folks setting up this service had the foresight to realize that having it on an easy IP was valuable.
I don't agree with the author's idea that an easy IP address is especially valuable. They're not making any money when technicians use their service because the IP is memorable...
If you are correct, there is a massive conspiracy at Google, where a single whistleblower would be able to cost the company billions of dollars.
4.2.2.2 could still be considered "valuable" because it's used as a public service for the Internet community, and its memorability increases the value of that service. And Google apparently thinks it can make money from the data it collects on its 8.8.8.8 nameserver; do you think that project would be just as valuable to Google if it were 216.44.159.113 instead?
I've been using this server as a ping and DNS test for at least 5-6 years, so it's great to hear more about it.
http://www.gannettonline.com/e/trends/18001162.html