One One One One!1111
I had some troubles with my Internet the other day.
I ran a podcast on YT, and that podcast kept playing, but nothing else would load. And the YT connection was slow. Occasionally other sites would work again, momentarily, but just as I was about to send an email, or save something somewhere, the connection gave up on me again...
What was the issue? DNS, yes. It seems to always be DNS.
I thought I'd try using Google's public DNS resolver, as I have in the past, but I used the wrong IP.
Theirs is 8.8.8.8
. For some reason I remembered it as 666.666.666.666
.
I tried 600.600.600.600
too. Didn't work. Tried 1.1.1.1
and it did! But was that really theirs? Had to check, and so I found this.
In the words of Cloudflare: 1.1.1.1 is a public DNS resolver operated by Cloudflare that offers a fast and private way to browse the Internet. Unlike most DNS resolvers, 1.1.1.1 does not sell user data to advertisers. In addition, 1.1.1.1 has been measured to be the fastest DNS resolver available.
It does not mine user data. Logs are kept for 24 hours for debugging purposes only. It's integrated into Cloudflare’s network - which spans 330 global cities, and if you're on a cellphone they even have an app for it with over a million positive reviews.
How had I not heard of this service before either?!
I've been a big fan of Cloudflare for a while now, not least since I learned that you can manage domains there at no extra cost at all, only the price they pay the domain registry. And they give you fair warning on registry price increases well in advance, so you can renew said domains for any number of years (or is it up to 10 years? Maybe there was a limit after all?) before said price increase comes into play.
They offer free DNS services with every domain you keep, not to mention free CDN services for personal sites, that by the way are used to cache and speed up some - if not most - of the biggest sites on the Internet. And unless you want priority services, and DDoS protection, or any other numbers of perks they offer, they pretty much give you all the tools you need to drastically optimize, speed-up and manage your site save for actual hosting at no cost at all.
So in my book they're pretty much one of the greatest companies out there. Making the Internet a better place one site at a time, or service and server innovation on the roadmap...
I wouldn't be surprised if they start offering a free plan for hosting too, though maybe that'd give them a problematic monopoly on website infrastructure. Maybe that wouldn't be so wise.
But this? This DNS resolver worked perfectly, everything started loading again right away, and it is fast. Faster than my ISP default on a good day.
Turns out there may actually be other benefits to using a resolver outside of the default too. It's not a security issue - unless you're with an unreliable resolver host, of course - but rather a benefit! It's kind of like a proxy really. It hides your connection. But that's a post for another day...
For now I'm surfin'! Blazing speeds. Up up and away.