Like OpenDNS, Google today launched their own public DNS service that they say will make your web-surfing experience "faster, safer and more reliable."
If you want to access a site (say example.com) from your browser, your computer needs the IP address of the web server that is hosting that domain. The computer will then query a public DNS server to find the IP address of the site example.com.
This DNS server is generally maintained by your ISP but now you can instruct your computer (or wireless router) to use Google’s DNS server instead of your ISP’s DNS server. Google says their Public DNS Servers are hosted in data centers worldwide, and they use anycast routing to send users to the geographically closest data center.
If you are keen on making the switch to Google DNS, here’re the steps involved for Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7.
Video: Setup Google DNS on Windows XP
Select Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4), followed by Properties and them replace the IP addresses of your Preferred DNS server and Alternate DNS server with the IP addresses of the Google DNS servers which are 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 - the order doesn’t matter.
Screencast: Use Google DNS Servers on Windows 7 / Vista
In the above videos, I have changed settings for an Ethernet (LAN) connection but the steps are similar for Wireless networks as well.
In case you would like to setup Google DNS at the router level, open your router dashboard (e.g., http://192.168.1.1) and put the Google DNS server addresses (8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4) as your DNS server settings and apply.
How to Test Google DNS Servers
Open your command prompt and clear your DNS cache using the command ipconfig /flushdns. Then do a nslookup for any web address and you should see 1e100.net with 8.8.8.8 as the IP address for the DNS resolver.
C:\>ipconfig /flushdns Windows IP Configuration Successfully flushed the DNS Resolver Cache. C:\>nslookup www.microsoft.com Server: any-in-0808.1e100.net Address: 8.8.8.8 Non-authoritative answer: Name: lb1.www.ms.akadns.net Addresses: 64.4.31.252 207.46.19.190 207.46.19.254 Aliases: www.microsoft.com toggle.www.ms.akadns.net g.www.ms.akadns.net C:\>
Find this article at: http://www.labnol.org/internet/setup-google-dns-servers/11439/
Tags: Archives, google dns, opendns, Internet
Reader Comments
I would rather use OpenDNS. Google already has too much user tracking built into its products. OpenDNS is very solid and fast as well.
Written by Manish on 12.03.09
If I use this google service, will be getting free internet, or do I still have to pay my internet bill?
Written by ardyanovich on 12.03.09
Why Google launch free DNS service ?
the reasons can be to
- show search result page with Google ads for unresolved domains.
- Get usage statistics. by knowing which domains get most DNS queries, they can know which sites are popular and possibly use this information in their ranking
- find new domains to crawl not in its index
Written by shafeek on 12.03.09
Thanks a lot for this. Anyway, will doing this prevent us from showing the real IP, so it’s like surfing the net anonymous? If yes, I don’t need to use Tor = great news.
Written by gofree on 12.03.09
Hmmm i wonder if switching to Google’s DNS server would make it faster for my Airtel DSL connection…
Anyone tested it ?
Written by Alfred on 12.04.09
I wonder if i could get some analysis on how would it be useful to use this service from Google. some queries that I have are
1. How much/what ‘extra’personal information would the Google be collecting when compared with our current ISP provided DNS
2. When they say its more secure, what attributes are they measuring it on?
Ciao,
Pranav
Written by Pranav on 12.04.09
It makes the DSL slower than before , WTF Google!!!!!!
Written by askam on 12.04.09
I tried Google Public DNS and its fast
My report shows almost 50% less latency but when I changed name server for one of domain
it took time to reflect that changes on my local PC and as soon as I changed it to Open DNS
I can see name server change
Written by Harsh Agrawal on 12.05.09