Moloth - The M-Forums

holy shit. really?? O_o

very interesting. i wonder what Google's end goal for this is...

I dont understand the significance of this. Could someone explain in simple terms what this is and means? ^^;

i dont know if this helps... but, http://www.robtex.com/dns/eurowindowsmexico.com.html

the words that make up a URL "Moloth.com" are actually numbers of a AP address and have to be translated.

yay, we're trusted! the fools! http://www.robtex.com/dns/moloth.com.html

Traditionally, DNS services are provided by your ISP. Most every service provider runs their own, including us at RTC. Big ISPs have shown, however, that they don't always have customer's best interest in mind and a few have monkeyed with DNS.

For instance, they figured out they could make more money if they featured a "service" that shows you ads for stuff if you happen to mistype a domain name. If you accidentally typed "moltoh.com" in your browser, instead of getting a generic server not found message, you'd be taken to an ISP-branded page with ads and suggestions on what you may have meant to type. Verizon did this, and several other big-name ISPs like Comcast and Charter to name a few. This type of "feature" was quickly taken away though, after consumer backlash.

Second, big ISPs don't always do a great job running DNS servers. Comcast suffered a major DNS outage a while back, effectively knocking a lot of customers offline. Even if you had full connectivity, if you can't resolve hostnames, you really aren't surfing anywhere.

Even when they're running though, a poor-performing DNS server can really impact your browsing experience. Several milliseconds of latency is all it takes to slow down a page from loading instantly, and as pages become more and more complex with stuff loading from multiple domains, this becomes more apparent. If you've ever seen a page load about halfway and then stall or hang, it's possible a slow DNS server is the cause. Not all the time of course, but certainly possible.

Lastly, DNS servers are susceptible to attack if not secured properly. And if a malicious entity controls your DNS, they basically control where you surf on the Internet, so this is a Big Deal.

So, in order to have a satisfying Internet experience, it's important that your DNS is fast, reliable, secure, and un-messed-around-with. So, Google's offering free public DNS which is all of those things.

A move like this can raise some privacy concerns, naturally. A company as large as Google who potentailly already has so much information about you - like your search queries, chats, and email - could now potentially record which sites you visit and in turn serve you more ads.

They've got a pretty cut and dry privacy policy which states they're just going to offer plain, fast, vanilla DNS.

Google is all about the user experience, they constantly test and test and measure and see what works best for users. Speed is a big factor in the user experience. Google VP Marissa Mayer explained at a conference users really respond to speed and even tiny increases in page load times can cause traffic to drop. Amazon confirms the same results with similar test.

To Google, traffic = revenue so they have a vested interest in keeping the user experience fast. Hence, Google Free Public DNS.

Speaking of Google, I have some Wave invites if anyone wants one.

Last edited by Russ (12/4/09 4:01 pm)

Moloth wrote:

i'd like to try out Wave!

You should (hopefully) have an invite in your inbox by now.

I haven't figured out Wave yet...I'm Gnawzy8ed so add me or whatever the fuck you do.

Ah, thank you Russ! That was exactly the type of explanation I was hunting! Now I get it.