Cloudflare launches new Public DNS

Saw this while on holiday so had a test with it on the phone while I was away, and seems pretty good so far. Back home now and switched the DNS on the router to it and it does seem a little better.

Did a quick benchmark as well and that's a nice difference:
QExjowu.png
 
opethdisciple said:
I must be the only one not seeing an improvement. :p

Using it at work and at home and it seems slower than Google DNS.

Based on London.
Click to expand...

According to DNSPerf, the Cloudflare service is 2 to 3 times faster* than Google. It's just you. :p I've been trying out the Quad9 DNS servers in conjunction with Cloudflare (with DNSSEC and tls-upstream: yes), and I'm finding it a very satisfactory setup. Quad9 is a bit slower than Cloudflare, but still faster than Google et al. Quad9 is also a global AnyCast service with full DNSSEC and TLS support, and incorporates masses of otherwise commercial (i.e. paid-for) threat detection from F-Secure, Cisco and others to help keep botnets and other malware nasties away from your network.

* World response times and European response times, respectively
 
@opethdisciple You got me curious so I added public DNS servers directly to unbound in pfSense and then did a comparison direct from the router. The identity of servers is, in order:

127.0.0.1 - Localhost directly querying root servers from the top down, hence slower than the others
9.9.9.9 - Quad9
1.0.0.1 - Cloudflare (marginally faster than 1.1.1.1 for me)
8.8.4.4 - Google
208.67.222.222 - Cisco OpenDNS
84.200.70.40 - DNS.watch

E84Rq37.png

No contest. This is on VM 350/20 and I'm in Liverpool. The ping suggests my nearest Cloudflare server is in Manchester.
 
Mixed bag for me but the secondary CloudFlare server is by far the fastest...

dnsping.jpg
 
Just a general note, I wouldn't mix and match DNS providers; that is, I wouldn't mix e.g. CloudFlare and Google because that will lead to inconsistent results based on which DNS server got picked by your router. Choose a provider, and stick to the primary/secondary for that provider.
 
Quick from central Scotland on Vodafone FTTC, looks to route to a server in Manchester

From dnsperftest (excuse the poor formatting)

Average (ms)
cloudflare 11
cleanbrowsi 17.7
level3 18.2
neustar 18.2
norton 18.2
opendns 19.5
google 20.5
comodo 25
quad9 29.8
yandex 63.6
adguard 87.4
freenom 110.2
 
DNSPerfTest is what I usually use.

My results:

Code: 
root@unifi:~/dnsperftest:$ ./dnstest.sh
                  test1   test2   test3   test4   test5   test6   test7   test8   test9   test10  Average
192.168.8.2       2 ms    2 ms    2 ms    3 ms    2 ms    2 ms    4 ms    2 ms    2 ms    2 ms      2.30
cloudflare        11 ms   11 ms   11 ms   10 ms   10 ms   10 ms   10 ms   11 ms   10 ms   11 ms     10.50
level3            11 ms   10 ms   10 ms   11 ms   11 ms   11 ms   11 ms   11 ms   11 ms   10 ms     10.70
google            11 ms   10 ms   11 ms   18 ms   28 ms   18 ms   12 ms   29 ms   11 ms   24 ms     17.20
quad9             10 ms   10 ms   11 ms   12 ms   11 ms   11 ms   10 ms   11 ms   10 ms   10 ms     10.60
freenom           37 ms   36 ms   38 ms   37 ms   36 ms   37 ms   37 ms   34 ms   34 ms   39 ms     36.50
opendns           22 ms   11 ms   18 ms   26 ms   17 ms   20 ms   12 ms   23 ms   18 ms   12 ms     17.90
norton            12 ms   11 ms   12 ms   14 ms   13 ms   12 ms   13 ms   19 ms   13 ms   1000 ms   111.90
cleanbrowsing     154 ms  155 ms  154 ms  155 ms  153 ms  150 ms  153 ms  153 ms  152 ms  154 ms    153.30
yandex            48 ms   78 ms   46 ms   45 ms   43 ms   44 ms   43 ms   40 ms   44 ms   48 ms     47.90
adguard           62 ms   59 ms   58 ms   62 ms   62 ms   64 ms   66 ms   57 ms   60 ms   115 ms    66.50
neustar           12 ms   14 ms   14 ms   13 ms   12 ms   12 ms   12 ms   12 ms   13 ms   13 ms     12.70
comodo            18 ms   18 ms   18 ms   18 ms   17 ms   17 ms   28 ms   18 ms   18 ms   19 ms     18.90


I switched to CloudFlare on my Pi-Hole installation but can't say I've noticed any difference.
 
Using Cloudflare on my Pi-hole and it definitely seems more punchy. I added both 1.0.0.1 and 1.1.1.1.

However, I've noticed a few things didn't work at first (and saw a few reports across the web) but they are fixed now. Santander's android app wouldn't work when using cloudflare but it appears to have resolved itself. BBC iPlayer Radio app doesn't work for some reason. Switching the DNS back it does.
 
Maybe I've done this wrong but I ran a ping test from the cmd prompt: ping 1.1.1.1 etc

For me in Yorkshire, using this method, Plusnet's DNS is 17ms whilst Cloudflare is 23ms. Disappointing result on the face of it.
 
Ping times aren't a true reflection of DNS server performance. It'll tell you how long it'll take to get data to and from the DNS server but NOT how long it'll take that DNS server to resolve your query.

Have a look at DNS benchmarking software instead.
 
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