Unplugged

Cloudflare DNS Promises Faster and More Secure Internet Browsing

By Brian Burgess

Updated November 11, 2018

Cloudflare DNS is a new free alternative DNS service that promises faster speeds and increased privacy for your web activities.

Recently, Cloudflare announced the launch of its own DNS service. Similar to other services like OpenDNS and Google Public DNS, it promises to make your browsing speeds faster compared to using your ISP. However, in addition to faster speeds, the company is promising users will get greater privacy during browsing sessions. DNS stands for “Domain Name System” and it resolves domain names into IP addresses. DNS makes it so you don’t need to remember the specific IP address of all the sites you want to get to. For example, instead of typing in 74.125.131.106 all the time, you just use google.com.

Cloudflare DNS 1.1.1.1

Using an alternate DNS, instead of your ISP’s, is a good way to get faster browsing results. Cloudflare DNS is touting 28% faster results over other services like OpenDNS. It offers both DNS-over-TLS and DNS-over-HTTPS and is currently sitting at a 14ms response time compared to 20ms or OpenDNS and 34ms for Google DNS. But most importantly, Cloudflare DNS is focussing heavily on privacy for the user. The company says it will wipe all logs of DNS queries within 24 hours. The company has also hired the global network auditing firm KPMG to verify that privacy claim.

You can add Cloudflare DNS to an individual device or, add it to your router might be a better option. That makes it so every device that joins your Wi-Fi network will use Cloudflare DNS without configuring each one individually. We have covered alternative DNS servers for quite some time. Notably OpenDNS and Google Public DNS, but they don’t always mean faster browsing. Usually, the difference is barely noticeable as we’re talking milliseconds.

There are other reasons other than speed to use an alternate DNS service. And services like OpenDNS provide a lot of other features and functionality. For example, you can configure OpenDNS to block offensive sites and more as it’s a rather robust service offered by Cisco. However, that does require you to create an account first. But, to use Cloudflare DNS, you just need to pop in 1.1.1.1 and 1.0.0.1 as preferred and alternate DNS servers.

If your online privacy is a major concern, as it seems to be thanks to the recent Facebook scandal, Cloudflare seems like a good one to try out versus Google. Still, even with a bit more security that Cloudflare DNS offers if you’re serious about your web activity being exposed and tracked by ad companies, then set up a VPN. We have a great guide on how to use a VPN and why you should.

Give Cloudflare DNS a try and let us know what you think. Have you used other DNS services like OpenDNS or Google Public DNS? Let us know what works best for you in the comment section below.