One may ask themselves what is DNS, and why is my favorite search engine in the business of it?

For starters DNS or Domain Name Systems is more or less the yellow pages of the internet as we know it today.

This system is in place to organize and identify domains. 

DNS provides a name for a a domain's IP or IP(s).

Once the user types in a URL such as : www.google.com DNS finds the IP address associated with the said Domain Name.

In addition DNS is used to discover where to deliver email for a particular address via the MX Record.

Now that being said Why Google DNS? According to Google the advantage(s) of using their "public" DNS are speed and security.

Claims from the company that they provision their DNS servers more robustly, hence making them more resistant to DOS attacks.

The company also claims that it will have a better grasp on caching, load balancing and more use of it's geographically distributed servers.

However my personal thoughts on why Google has dabbled into the business of DNS would be of the following:

1.) Data, data, data - Google will use their DNS to collect and retain more info about visitors Internet usage and habits.

2.) Google will take mistyped URLs and redirect them to a Google error page rather than an ISP hosted page.

A couple of considerations before switching over to Google DNS

1.) You should change the DNS entry on your router, rather than natively on the machine that you are using. Taking this route to add DNS to router ensures that any other machines you add to your network will use the DNS that you have set up on the entire network.

2.) This should not be used for a work machine. This could take down all network resources that you have access to, inside your LAN.

*Google DNS does not work on IPV6*

Google has provided a link page on it's Public DNS site on how to set it up.

Does it really effect the search results?

Find out for yourself.

IS It Faster?

The company has made claims that its DNS is faster than others. I would recommend that you test this out for yourself, because each situation will vary.

I would love to hear some feedback on those that have tested the new Google DNS. I have conducted my own test, however I think I will save the results for another post.

-KP