Cloudflare has launched new free public DNS resolvers 1.1.1.1 and 1.0.0.1 on April Fools day 2018 (This is not a joke, its a real service). This service competes directly with Google’s and OpenDNS’s public resolvers.

Cloudflare claims to build the new resolvers with Security and Speed as basic features. Here are the results for latency test for both 1.1.1.1 and 8.8.8.8 from all over the world for comparison (Click on the image to zoom).

Of course this is just a simple latency test and actual performance may vary depending on different other factors.

Memorable IP Address

Until now Google 8.8.8.8 used to be the most memorable publicly used ip address followed by Level 3’s 4.2.2.2. Cloudflare’s 1.1.1.1 is not more memorable than Google’s 8.8.8.8 but I have to admit its way cooler. This is important because you can use domain names so you dont have to remember ip addresses of websites but you cannot do it with DNS servers and you need to know the ip address.

DNS-over-TLS and DNS-over-HTTPS Support

DNS protocol was not designed with security in mind because at the time it was designed it did not need it. Its not true for today’s internet. For that reason CloudFlare’s DNS servers support both DNS-over-TLS and DNS-over-HTTPS from day 1.

Fastest DNS Server

Cloudflare has also posted in their blog that DNSPerf has ranked 1.1.1.1 as the fastest DNS server with an average of 14ms of query speed. Of course you will get different results based on your location and whether or not you are a Cloudflare customer.

DNS Query Name Minimisation to Improve Privacy

Cloudflare also supports DNS Query Name Minimisation to Improve Privacy as defined in RFC7816 which means that Cloudflare’s DNS resolvers do not send full query to the upstream name servers which reduces the information leaked to upstream DNS servers, like the root and TLDs.

IPv6 Support

Along with 1.1.1.1 and 1.0.0.0.1 Cloudflare has also provided memorable ip addresses for their IPv6 DNS servers 2606:4700:4700::1111 and 2606:4700:4007::1001.

You can learn more about Cloudflare’s DNS server’s on https://1.1.1.1