If you give a hacker a new toy, the first thing he’ll do is take it apart to figure out how it works.
~ Jamie Zawinski.
DNS or Domain Name System, sometimes called the phonebook of the internet, is one way for us to easily access our favorite websites. It translates and redirects human readable domain names (e.g., yahoo.com, google.com) to their respective IP addresses. Finding a good DNS provider is vital in accessing information that is sometimes censored by our government, ISP, and the likes.
These are my top three good DNS (Domain Name System) providers that are really fast, secure, and reliable, and that can be used in Southeast Asia. All three run global networks, and in my experience they beat the DNS that your ISP hands you by default in both speed and honesty.
☁️ Cloudflare
Cloudflare Public DNS (IPv4)
1.1.1.1
1.0.0.1Cloudflare Public DNS (IPv6)
2606:4700:4700::1111
2606:4700:4700::1001So why Cloudflare1? Choose Cloudflare if you want less than 1ms of domain name resolution. Seriously, they have the fastest name resolution on the internet. Their anycast network means almost everyone on the planet is within a few milliseconds of a Cloudflare resolver, and the privacy posture is famously strict: Cloudflare has promised to never write your query data to disk.
Google Public DNS (IPv4)
8.8.8.8
8.8.4.4Google Public DNS (IPv6)
2001:4860:4860::8888
2001:4860:4860::8844So why Google2? You will use this if you need an old but still good reliable DNS server. It’s been used as a primary name resolution on big companies as well as local workstations, and it has been running since 2009, which in DNS years makes it one of the most battle tested resolvers on the planet. It’s much better than your ISP (Internet Service Provider) provided DNS, which is often slow and sometimes inserts its own ad pages for mistyped domains.
🟨 Yandex
Yandex DNS (IPv4)
77.88.8.8
77.88.8.1Yandex DNS (IPv6)
2a02:6b8::feed:0ff
2a02:6b8:0:1::feed:0ffSo why Yandex3? You’ll choose this if you’re a webmaster due to super-fast name resolution propagation. This is the fastest DNS for name resolution propagation, in whichever region you are currently in, which makes it handy when you just changed records and want the world to know about it now.
These three are mostly corporate, but they do provide fast speed TLD name resolution. And if you really still feel they can be manipulated, feel free to enable DNSSEC. For example, on Cloudflare, a single domain would resolve at less than 1ms.
So, guys, what are your top DNS providers?
🧠 Final Thoughts
Switching DNS is a five minute change that most people put off for years, and it is one of the easiest wins in all of networking. Whichever provider you land on, the important thing is that you are using an independent, well maintained resolver instead of whatever your ISP preconfigured for you.
If you are in Southeast Asia and your ISP’s DNS keeps timing out during peak hours, try one of these three and watch the difference. Your browser will load faster, and you will stop seeing those ad pages for mistyped domains. Thanks for reading!
- Cloudflare, Inc. is an American web-infrastructure and website-security company, providing content-delivery-network services, DDoS mitigation, Internet security, and distributed domain-name-server services. Wikipedia ↩︎
- Google LLC is an American multinational technology company that specializes in Internet-related services and products, which include online advertising technologies, search engine, cloud computing, software, and hardware. It is considered one of the Big Four technology companies, alongside Amazon, Apple, and Facebook. Wikipedia ↩︎
- Yandex is a technology company that builds intelligent products and services powered by machine learning. Our goal is to help consumers and businesses better navigate the online and offline world. Since 1997, we have delivered world-class, locally relevant search and information services. ↩︎