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I use cloudflare DNS because it’s faster. But should I worry, having read your comment? What is the downside to using it? What would you recommend instead?

by surgical_fire10 hours ago|

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Quad9.

Many years ago I used Cloudflare, and more than once I had issues with them blocking websites I wanted to access.

I absolutely despise that. I want my DNS to resolve domain names, nothing else.

For blocking things I have Pi-Hole, which is under my control for that reason. I can blacklist or whitelist addresses to my needs, not to the whims of a corporation that wants to play gatekeeper to what I can browse.

by akerl_10 hours ago|

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So… why not use 1.1.1.1, cloudflare’s resolver that does not block resolution?

1.1.1.2 and .3 are explicitly offered with filtered responses.

by surgical_fire10 hours ago|

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I used to use 1.1.1.1. I still had issues.

Quad9 behaves exactly as I expect a DNS to work, in the sense that I only remember I use it when the topic of DNS pops up.

by akerl_10 hours ago|

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Your claim was that 1.1.1.1 was blocking sites.

Are you saying now you just had issues with the quality of service? Or do you want to provide more details to substantiate the claim that they were blocking sites?

by surgical_fire9 hours ago|

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No, I do not keep any logs from domain name resolution from the DNS service I used from 7+ years ago. If you do, I commend you.

I used the term "blocking" in a loose sense. I have no idea if Cloudflare was failing to resolve certain domains because it is a shitty service, or if it was ordered to block those domain names by its government, or if it was actively not resolving domain names because it thought a good idea to be a sort of arbiter and gatekeeper. I suspect the last option, but it is just speculation.

What I can affirm is that I had issues more than once with domain name resolution when I used 1.1.1.1. After it annoyed me enough I switched to Quad9, and it has been great ever since, which is why I recommend it as a user of their service.

by longislandguido4 hours ago|

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> I have no idea if Cloudflare was failing to resolve certain domains because it is a shitty service, or if it was ordered to block those domain names by its government, or if it was actively not resolving domain names because it thought a good idea to be a sort of arbiter and gatekeeper.

I'm going to go with option D) whatever shitty site you were browsing to had a broken DNS or more likely DNSSEC configuration and Cloudflare was correct to not serve a corrupt response.

99% of the time, tales of "they're blocking my site! you guys are nazis!" always turn out to have a root cause of broken DNS configuration.

by surgical_fire4 hours ago|

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> I'm going to go with option D) whatever shitty site you were browsing to had a broken DNS or more likely DNSSEC configuration and Cloudflare was correct to not serve a corrupt response.

And once I switched DNS I could browse it normally.

This does not align quite well with the scenario you propose.

> "they're blocking my site! you guys are nazis!"

I said no such thing. I said it was a shitty DNS because it failed at the thing I was trying to use it for.

by akerl_9 hours ago|

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I don’t keep DNS logs at all. But I also don’t show up 7 years later trash talking a company or product based on guesswork and fear.

by surgical_fire9 hours ago|

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It's not based in "guesswork and fear". It is a first-person account of someone that used their service. A user review, if you will.

There's this thing - when you offer a service to the public, the users of your service, can, will, and should review your service.

So, yes, I am free to "trash talk" a service that was, frankly, terrible at its job in providing domain name resolution. That works as any other user review, a data point so other users may switch away from a bad provider to a better one.

I imagine if someone goes to a restaurant and they their hot dish is served cold, if your response to the user review is a silly request for proof that the food was indeed served cold, and whining that their review is "trash talking based on fear and guesswork".

by akerl_9 hours ago|

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If you said that they served you cold food because the US government made them do it, yea, I’d think you were nuts.

by surgical_fire7 hours ago|

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And that's not what I said?

I offered some possibilities of why they did a shitty job in providing naming resolution. I even speculated what was the most likely one (not the one you mentioned).

But it's okay, at this point I have very little optimism regarding your reading ability.

by hirako200010 hours ago|

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Because that would be subject to the whim of the provider, who subject to court orders would have to oblige to continue operating as US entity.

by akerl_10 hours ago|

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How does that differ from Quad9? You’re subject to Swiss laws, so there’s still a government involved? And you’re now hosted in an area where the US government has far fewer limitations on what they can attempt.

by Kwpolska9 hours ago|

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Quad9 is based in Switzerland, but the three founders-sponsors are US-based [0], so I’m not sure if it can be considered 100% safe from US government intervention.

[0] https://quad9.net/about/sponsors/

by KomoD8 hours ago|

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The ASN and stuff is also operated by a US entity it seems like:

  ASHandle:       AS19281
  Street:         CleanerDNS Inc. dba Quad9
  Street:         1442A Walnut Street, Suite 501
  City:           Berkeley
  State/Prov:     CA
  Country:        US

They also have servers in the US, so that's yet another reason not to consider them "100% safe from US government intervention"

by akerl_9 hours ago|

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Also a quick search suggests that Switzerland has made Internet providers in-country block DNS results in the past.

by ranger_danger4 hours ago|

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Why give all your queries to a single company with an interest in tracking you and selling your data?

by saaaaaam17 minutes ago|

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But don’t most ISPs do this? And if you use google’s DNS, for example, are they not doing this? Does cloudflare sell the data?

by 8cvor6j844qw_d610 hours ago|

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Same thoughts. Cloudflare DNS is noticeably slow to resolve on some of my devices.

Switching to literally any other DNS and the same domains resolve instantly.

Could be a issue specific to my location or devices, but its been consistent enough that I stopped bothering.

by Bender10 hours ago|

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I don't use the public resolvers but here [1] is a script that will show which of those public resolvers is fastest from your location. Add or remove resolvers as you desire. Be sure to scroll down to see a few of the sorting examples. Not my script or repo.

Just as a side note: Something I have done with this in the past as a fun experiment was to set up an Unbound DoT server on assorted VPS nodes in assorted locations around the country, run this script and configure each Unbound to use the 5 to 10 fastest servers on each node and cache results longer. Then I used Tinc (open source VPN) to connect to these VPS nodes from my home's Unbound and distribute the requests among all of them. I save query logs from all of them and use cron to look up all my queries hourly to keep the cache fresh and mess up any analytic patterns for my queries. Just a fun experiment. 99.99% of the time I just query the root DNS servers for what NS servers are authoritative for a given domain or what I call bare-backing the internet.

[1] - https://github.com/cleanbrowsing/dnsperftest

by ranger_danger7 hours ago|

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I have no idea why anyone would drink water from a faucet, much less trust their more filtered versions.

by surgical_fire7 hours ago|

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[flagged]

by UqWBcuFx6NV4r7 hours ago|

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You sufficiently devolved the conversation by feeling it worth voicing “I don’t know why different people willingly use different things”. What are we supposed to do with that? Next you’re going to chastise us for not using ThinkPads.

by bigyabai4 hours ago|

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Have you stopped and asked yourself why they were criticizing Cloudflare's DNS? I feel like you could write this comment defending Facebook addicts or revenge porn.

by surgical_fire7 hours ago|

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> What are we supposed to do with that?

Apparently, respond to me with inane thoughts, to which I patiently reply.

> You sufficiently devolved the conversation by feeling it worth voicing “I don’t know why different people willingly use different things”.

Also, let's appreciate the irony of your message here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47464134#47477847