Farrell IT Consulting, LLC

Free DNS!

Why would anyone care what domain name server they used to obtain IP addresses like 66.191.143.115 from domain names like farrellit.net?

Many internet users, including many savvy surfers, do not care. However, web surfing can be safer, faster, and more anonymous, with the right choice in nameservers.

Your ISP probably provides two or more nameservers for you to use. Unfortunately, many ISPs provide terrible name service. They routinely answer lookups that should fail with the addresses of their own sites, possibly guessing at the domain name you might have been looking for. This is only confusing for general web surfing, but can be downright counterproductive if the DNS lookup is intended to ascertain the availability of a domain or other analysis. I have also seen many ISP provided nameservers that don't respect the TTL of DNS information, thus potentially serving outdated data, or even interfering with webpage access completely.

There are worse repercussions of a poor choice of domain name server. A compromised nameserver can serve malicious information instead of real answers, thereby sending surfers to phishing sites that can collect their passwords, credit card numbers, or other personal information, for nefarious purposes. If you navigate to google.com, and the page looks just like google, and forwards your requests to the real google, you might never notice that someone is between you and google, stealing all your personal information without ever interrupting your services. You might never notice, that is, until your identity is stolen or your bank accounts drained!

Some viruses or other malware change the DNS servers on a computer; others pose as local DHCP servers and serve local computers malicious nameserver information when they use DHCP to configure network connections (the use of DHCP is ubiquitous - if you have never set your IP address, default route, and nameserver manually, then you've used DHCP exclusively).

In short, compromised DNS means a compromised web experience.

Other Good Options

Google provides a very nice DNS service at 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4; it is faster than my DNS could ever hope to be. However, it's a good bet that google knows who you are when you look up domain names on their servers, and associates all your lookups with your account. Though no more insidious than Google's well known (and accepted) search and browsing statistics, it is still enough to irritate many privacy advocates. If you're not worried about privacy, but standards-compliant and accurate DNS answers, Google's DNS service is perfect for you.

OpenDNS also provides a free DNS service that is fast and reliable. However, like many ISPs, OpenDNS will respond affirmatively to DNS lookups for names that don't exist. If this bugs you, don't use OpenDNS!

FarrellIT's offering

My public nameserver blends the two upsides. While I do log queries for statistical purposes, I cannot and do not associate your IP address with any personal information. (Incidentally, IP addresses are almost never static; they usually change on a monthly, weekly, or even daily basis).

My public nameserver also tells you if a domain you're looking for doesn't exist. Does Yours? If that link does not bring up an error page in your browser, then the nameserver you are using answers queries for nonexistent domains with the same answer it uses for legitimate domains.

I use this nameserver often; It caches its answers appropriately, unlike many nameservers I see in coffeeshops and other free wifi hotspots, and has almost no load - at least, not yet!

You are welcome to use it too. Just don't abuse it, please!