Public DNS space getting crowded
An Internet colleague of mine recently wrote about Internet conglomerate Google’s entry into the public DNS space with the launch of Google Public DNS as a standards-compliant alternative to OpenDNS and the DNS services provided by your ISP. While it’s true that Google Public DNS returns standard DNS results and doesn’t use NXDOMAIN substitution, it wasn’t the first public DNS server by any means. Another colleague instant messaged me that he uses free DNS servers provided by Internet backbone provider Level 3 Communications because of their even easier to remember IP addresses. Both the free public DNS services provided by Google Public DNS and Level 3 Communications do return traditional DNS results and do provide a reasonably fast service, they don’t take advantage of recent enhancements in the DNS space, pioneered by OpenDNS and VeriSign Registry’s ill-fated SiteFinder attempt at wildcarding the “.com” and “.net” space at the root-zone level in 2003.
Now, I was an ardent opponent of SiteFinder in 2003, as various Google Web searches will attest, but that’s because it was done at the root-zone level and forced upon Internet users with no net benefit other than to provide an added revenue stream for VeriSign by filling an error page with lots of advertisements when someone hit a non-existent domain. However, what SiteFinder did do was introduce NXDOMAIN substitution to the world.
Jan 3, 2010 @ 12:41 pm
