I have got this news this morning and thought I might share it, hopefully contributing to a more private and faster internet experience. But please, don’t be fooled, the increase in speed won’t be easily observable as we are talking about milliseconds.

Milliseconds?

Yes. In the networking world when you test networks it is a common practice to send data packets to other computers on the network and measure how long the packet takes to come back.

This test is done through the ping command.

Of course the amount of time that these data packets require is very short and this is why it is measured in milliseconds. As I mentioned above, making this change is not something that will make observable differences to your daily internet experience, still by reading the official data on the homepage dedicated to this project, it seems like the amount of time required for a data packet “to go and come back” is reduced by half, by using the new DNS 1.1.1.1 instead of the widely used google DNS 8.8.8.8 or 4.4.4.4.

From this data it appears that pinging google DNS 8.8.8.8 should take 34.7 ms, while pinging 1.1.1.1 should take 14.8 ms.

This is what made me consider the fact of changing my current setting: for sure we are talking about milliseconds. Still it is half the time I would normally require to have an answer from Google’s DNS.

Really? Let’s try it then!

Changing the DNS settings in your router takes just a few minutes. If you know by heart “where is what” in your router configuration it may take even seconds… or milliseconds! 🙂

Out of curiosity I have performed some tests by using the ping command myself. I let the software send 10 packets and the results show that using 1.1.1.1 instead of 8.8.8.8 as a DNS is circa 35% faster. Not as fast as I first thought, but faster. Here below my test results:

About privacy

But speed is not the only concern.

It seems that DNS, as it is used today, can be used by ISPs to collect information about which pages are visited by whom. Even if the visited pages are securely encrypted and showing the green https:// in the address bar the ISP will still know that you are visiting that page. And, it seems like some ISPs could be tempted of selling this information to other companies for marketing reasons.

As stated on the project homepage Cloudflare and APNIC have teamed up to change this and make sure that by using 1.1.1.1 no IPs will be logged, which will considerably help in respecting the privacy of their users.

Should you be interest on more details regarding the subject you may want to read cloudflare’s blog.

Issues

Personally I haven’t had any issues in making the change, also because my network configuration is pretty simple. I have already read that for some countries and with some ISP there are issues as the address 1.1.1.1 has been used for a wide range of scopes which may interfere. If I understood it right though, if you are able to open https://1.1.1.1 you should be fine.

Hope you did find the post interesting, feel free to leave a comment, and maybe add your own measurements? 🙂