7 ms·

I'll do a blog post about this later today for those interested in my perspective on them entering the DNS space. :-) Edit: Here it is: http://blog.opendns.co

• auston 17y ago
  please do!
• noelchurchill 17y ago
  I was wondering what you'd think :)
• stuff4ben 17y ago
  Ha! I was wondering in my head what OpenDNS would say about this when I read the article. Had no idea you were the founder of the company. That's pretty cool that you're on here.
• mahmud 17y ago
  No need David, we're keeping the faith in this shop. ns[1-4].everydns.net, the first thing I do to a domain name that comes under my control.
  • colbyolson 17y ago
    Who owns/is EveryDNS? They have a node in SanJose,CA (where I live) and I've never heard of them.
    • aaronblohowiak 17y ago
      I'm not entirely sure, but I used to go to high school with a kid (a different Dave) that was absolutely brilliant and did some work with them. When I was looking for a dns provider, he showed me their site and I've referred them to everyone I know since. They really run an excellent service at top-notch quality. Probably time for me to donate again..
    • jf 17y ago
      "I'm David Ulevitch. I have a website at http://david.ulevitch.com/ http://david.ulevitch.com/ I am the founder and CTO of OpenDNS. I also started and run EveryDNS.Net. You should be using both of them." via: http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=davidu http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=davidu
• bcl 17y ago
  Note that they don't seem to be proxying opendns's domain...
  • blasdel 17y ago
    For those who don't know about the referenced shenanigans, OpenDNS proxies google search traffic onto its own servers. OpenDNS: It's neither 'open' nor DNS!
    • gojomo 17y ago
      I knew OpenDNS redirected host-not-found traffic to their results page, but hadn't heard of them "prox[ying] google search traffic onto its own servers". Do you have more details?
      • bcl 17y ago
        Here is what google is serving up: [bcl@lister tmp]$ dig www.google.com ; <<>> DiG 9.6.1-P2-RedHat-9.6.1-7.P2.fc11 <<>> www.google.com ;; global options: +cmd ;; Got answer: ;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 33790 ;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 7, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0 ;; QUESTION SECTION: ;www.google.com. IN A ;; ANSWER SECTION: www.google.com. 603958 IN CNAME www.l.google.com. www.l.google.com. 300 IN A 74.125.53.106 www.l.google.com. 300 IN A 74.125.53.103 www.l.google.com. 300 IN A 74.125.53.147 www.l.google.com. 300 IN A 74.125.53.105 www.l.google.com. 300 IN A 74.125.53.99 www.l.google.com. 300 IN A 74.125.53.104 ;; Query time: 52 msec ;; SERVER: 192.168.101.20#53(192.168.101.20) ;; WHEN: Thu Dec 3 16:44:24 2009 ;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 148 Here is what opendns serves up: [bcl@lister tmp]$ dig www.google.com @208.67.222.222 ; <<>> DiG 9.6.1-P2-RedHat-9.6.1-7.P2.fc11 <<>> www.google.com @208.67.222.222 ;; global options: +cmd ;; Got answer: ;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 54658 ;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 3, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0 ;; QUESTION SECTION: ;www.google.com. IN A ;; ANSWER SECTION: www.google.com. 30 IN CNAME google.navigation.opendns.com. google.navigation.opendns.com. 30 IN A 208.67.216.230 google.navigation.opendns.com. 30 IN A 208.67.216.231 ;; Query time: 26 msec ;; SERVER: 208.67.222.222#53(208.67.222.222) ;; WHEN: Thu Dec 3 16:47:25 2009 ;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 104 All your queries are belong to us.
• huherto 17y ago
  I didn't know who you were, but now I am very curious about what you think.
• jeff18 17y ago
  My comment on your blog is being moderated, but here's what I said: I think it’s a little naive to think it is a good thing for you. How are you going to compete with Google’s infrastructure and get your response times down to Google DNS’? I would expect many people will switch away as I just have until you can roll out an extremely expensive upgrade.
  • davidu 17y ago
    Their datacenter deployment is actually focused on large scale computing datacenters, not tons of footprint. It's widely deployed, and better in Asia than us, but that's not for long. Update: I approved your comment.
    • jeff18 17y ago
      Really? I could have sworn that Google was all about local content distribution, to the point of creating new fundamental internet infrastructure to reduce latency. Learn something new every day.
• marltod 17y ago
  Your fifth point is the most important one for me. Once they know your DNS data they can make make very educated guesses about the rest of your internet traffic. Google knows what is hosted at the servers you are looking up.
  • pyre 17y ago
    > Google knows what is hosted at the servers you are looking up. And so does every other DNS provider so long as the pages are public and if your ISP is your DNS provider then they can directly sniff your (non-encrypted) traffic too.
    • ericd 17y ago
      I don't think any existing DNS providers have other sources of data like Google does. It's when it all comes together (search+analytics+adsense+Google Account reporting your trail, indexed website content and your email for profiling you) to make a dataset with potentially unprecedented cleanliness/completeness that it becomes interesting/scary. They can likely draw much stronger conclusions than most. Not sure if their privacy policy lets them exercise their power fully in this field, though.
      • pyre 17y ago
        I was specifically addressing his post, not every possibility. He was claiming this was bad because Google has access to the content at each of the servers you lookup through their DNS service. My point was that so does everyone else on the internet, including other DNS providers that you might use. (i.e. If I go to sws.example.com which hosts a Secret Warez Stash, unless it's password-protected everyone has access to it, not just Google.)
    • thaumaturgy 17y ago
      Well, your ISP potentially has access to your DNS lookups regardless of whether you're using Google's DNS servers or theirs or someone else's. That is, assuming the ISP owns the fiber that you're connected through. Small ISPs don't. But now you're adding yet another party in the mix -- Google, who already have a lot of information about your interests and habits. At the very very least, you're inviting an interested third party to have a look at your traffic. Most of davidu's response was kind of a waste of time, but the one thing that made an impression on me was when he referred to Google as an advertising company. He's right; they're the most technologically advanced advertising company in the world. So if this conversation was about "an unnamed technologically savvy advertising company", instead of Google, would you still be interested in giving them your DNS traffic?
• hop 17y ago
  it’s not the same as OpenDNS. When you use Google DNS, you are getting the experience they prescribe. When you use OpenDNS, you get the Dashboard controls to manage your experience the way you want for you, your family or your organization. Not mentioned was OpenDNS sends failed requests be default to a search page full of ads... Google appears to not be monetizing this.
  • myared 17y ago
    Not monetizing this? Where do you think their motivation is coming from (to make the world a better place?) Google Analytics falls into the same category. You're not paying currency to use the service; you're paying with your metrics. When you think about it in terms of scale, this is way worse. Google is great at taking this data and using it to generate revenue in a number of other ways. Any smart advertiser who uses Google Adwords to buy traffic knows to stay away from Google Analytics. Why would you let the company you're buying traffic from know how that traffic behaves? The DNS project takes this a step further by giving Google a world of new data. Now you don't have to use Google or be on a site with Google Analytics for Google to know where you're going. Seems harmless, but I bet they can't wait for this to be adopted by the masses. With all that being said, 8.8.8.8 is a damn cool IP address and I'm sure my Google-powered Droid already uses it. /rant
    • rpdillon 17y ago
      I love how everyone comes down on Google for collecting data about net traffic, as though no other company on the internet ever thought of collecting traffic metrics. What is your current DNS provider's policy on DNS data collection? In the case of OpenDNS, sure, they have a privacy policy, but they also proxy Google's results and serve up ads. How's that so much better? I'm perfectly happy to have my DNS data be collected (which I assume my ISP is already collecting) in exchange for ad-free, fast name resolution. Plus, now I don't ever need to look up a DNS server again, Google's is 8.8.8.8. Sweet. EDIT: looks like Google's not collecting so much information anyway. http://code.google.com/speed/public-dns/privacy.html http://code.google.com/speed/public-dns/privacy.html
      • 17y ago
• dannyr 17y ago
  From the blog post: "Third, Google claims that this service is better because it has no ads or redirection. But you have to remember they are also the largest advertising and redirection company on the Internet. To think that Google’s DNS service is for the benefit of the Internet would be naive. They know there is value in controlling more of your Internet experience and I would expect them to explore that fully. And of course, we always have protected user privacy and have never sold our DNS data. Here’s a link to our privacy policy." davidu, You have excellent points but you could have made them without bashing your competitor. This response makes me think that you are afraid of your competition and using fear to convince people to use OpenDNS.
  • jamesbritt 17y ago
    " ... and using fear to convince people to use OpenDNS." Is the fear justified? Is it plausible enough that people should take it into account when picking a DNS service? Google's self-interest is a legitimate factor to consider.
• socratees 17y ago
  Your post seems like anti-Google to me. Aren't people free to choose the service they like? The one with the best service should be the market leader. On what basis will you separate the ownership of internet apps? Saying Google has the whole internet stack, so its evil is naive. :)
• deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
• known 17y ago
  Did you anticipate Google will launch public DNS resolvers?