Google announced a DNS service today. So what does that mean? Read on to find out.

For those who don’t know DNS is the technology where your ISP converts a domain name (like google.com) to its string of numbers (for 1.1.1.1 example).

The reason why Google wants to get into this is because most ISP’s DNS servers are slow, unreliable or allow attacks in. Now the question is. Should you use Google for your DNS, or the well-known OpenDNS service?

Open DNS

• It’s domain servers for you to use are 208.67.222.222, and 208.67.220.220
• It has servers in Amsterdam, Chicago, Dallas, London, LA, Miami, New York, Palo Alto, Seattle, and Washington.
• OpenDNS is currently serving 19.3 Billion DNS requests per day.

Pros:

1. With servers all around the world it allows your DNS to resolve faster, and if one goes down, another will work for you.
2. It has phishing protection so you are protected from fake websites.
3. You can block websites individually or by one of the 40+ filters.
4. Much more reliable then your ISP.
5. If another OpenDNS user visited a website, but now its offline, if you have smart cache enabled it will continue to resolve (assuming it’s a dns issue).
6. Many high end company’s, schools, and governments are using the service daily.
7. Has plans (paid) for Enterprises.
8. Its free basic service is only lacking faster customer support, and larger website blocking features.
9. Websites can be voted by the users with category’s so that websites can be blocked if they are 18+, have ad ware, are gaming, or are high network load.
10. Stats (Charts, requests, domains, blocked, etc).
11. Has guides to help you set it up on your router or computer.
12. Has an application to deal with dynamic IP’s.
13. Hasn’t ever completely gone down in its 4 years.

Cons:

1. Unless you purchase a plan if a url does not resolve you will see a page like Google with ads. (They need to make $)
2. The website voting can be highly inaccurate.
3. Its phishing service Phishtank which is run by its users can take DAYS or even months to flag a url.

Overall, its a fantastic service that I am using, and I am very proud of.

Google DNS

• It’s domain servers are 8.8.8.8, and 8.8.4.4
• Is run on Google’s servers.

Pros:

1. It’s free
2. It’s simple
3. It’s from Google
4. It’s reliable

Cons:

1. While its nice that Google is doing this it now literally can control your whole internet experience.
2. Store’s a ton of personal information on its servers (encrypted) which are then removed after 2 weeks.
3. Way to basic its pretty much just an alternative your bad ISP DNS.
4. OpenDNS is much faster, and does a lot more.

Overall, Nice that Google is doing this but the end-user doesn’t really see much. OpenDNS is just all around much better than Google.

So, in the end I would choose OpenDNS because of its features.

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