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One curious thing about 8.8.8.8 (and 8.8.4.4) is that it gets redirected to the closest Google CDN.

• jsjohnst 9y ago
  > One curious thing DNS is something that’s commonly Anycasted. In laymen’s terms, basically what that means is rather than 8.8.8.8 pointing to one server (or a load balanced cluster in one DC) as you might expect, it rather points to potentially thousands of servers all over the globe and the closest one (BGP route wise) is the one picked for you.
  • sp332 9y ago
    8.8.8.8 is already an IP address so DNS is not involved. The anycast is handled by just BGP.
    • kelnos 9y ago
      I think the parent meant that anycast is often used for DNS servers, not that a DNS lookup is used to find the closest Google DNS server.
    • jsjohnst 9y ago
      Kelnos was correct, the service that 8.8.8.8 provides is DNS, hence the relevance when talking about 8.8.8.8 being anycasted.
      • sp332 9y ago
        Man, I must have been asleep this afternoon because I could not figure out what a bare IP address had to do with DNS. I get it now.