Apparently Cloudflare has launched its own public DNS service in collaboration with APNIC. It's conveniently hosted on 1.1.1.1 (and 1.0.0.1 as backup), fast to blazing fast, depending on where you're using it from, and potentially, if we are to trust Cloudflare, more privacy-centric than your ISP's DNS service might be.

Just wanted to let you guys know it's out there - I've only recently heard of it and have started using it a couple of days ago. I only have positive things to say about it so far.

And I'm obviously curious: is anyone else using it?

So, how does that cheque feel?

I'm not saying you're a shill, but I'd like to apply for coupons too.

Aldi is a great grocery store. Their prices are competitive, and they have a variety of interesting weekly products.

Never really understood the western use of cheques. Never cashed in one in my life, though someone did show me how they look once :P. What's wrong with cash or credit/debit cards?

Back on topic though, there are plenty of alternatives, but I never felt the need to try one before. It turns out it's much faster than the DNS my ISP provides (up to 3 times as fast), and that's coming from a place that has one of the best internet speeds in Europe if not the world.

Wait, what? You have Aldi in the States?

Yep, I've been using it for a few months already. In this age where absolutely everybody is after your data I don't totally trust Cloudflare, but I still trust them more than Google, the local ISP's and of course any random DNS you might get assigned to while traveling and using the Wifi of an airport or hotel...

Also, a lot of people are going to start using it inadvertently because Firefox plans to use it as its default DNS over HTTPS, which raises a few privacy questions.

I have used it on occasion when my normal DNS stopped working. It also responds to ping requests, so pinging it can be a good way to test if you have network connectivity.

(Linux tip: At least on debian, you can change the nameserver in /etc/resolv.conf, and while the change is only temporary, that's OK if the outage is only temporary.)

By the way, for those who aren't aware, Google also has a public DNS server at 8.8.8.8 (backup, I believe, is 8.8.4.4).

Yeah, heard about that, but I guess Mozilla will provide a way to disable it. I'll probably keep using the regular unencrypted DNS service we're talking about in this thread.

What surprised me the most is that it is noticeably faster than my ISP's DNS (Google's public DNS is faster too, but not by much). I always assumed my ISP's DNS would be in the best position to resolve queries in the blink of an eye, but then again not every ISP invests in these kind of things on a large scale. I guess it's likely they'd be more worried about coverage and raw throughput than DNS optimizations.