Faster Internet for FREE in 30 seconds - No... Seriously
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2018-05-06
·
1,591 words · ~7 min read
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Last time I said, what if I told you that you can double, triple, or even
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quadruple your internet speed with one easy trick. The answer was to just spend
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more money on extra internet connections. So I can understand your hesitation
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about clicking this video. Thank you for giving me another chance, because guess
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what? It's redemption time! This new tip that works on PC, Mac, Linux, and even your phone
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will make your internet anywhere from a little bit to a metric butt-ton faster
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in less than a minute, for free. There's a new DNS in town, baby.
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Private Internet Access is the VPN service that encrypts all of your
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internet traffic and uses a safe, protected IP. It's got tons of other
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useful features and you can check it out at the link below. So today's tip is
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actually nothing new. Using a faster or more reliable DNS service than the one
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that you're using right now is going to make your internet speed a lot faster.
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The new development that your good-for-nothing ISP assigns to you is something people have been doing for years.
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The new development is that Cloudflare, best known for their anti-DDoS
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protection service, has released a competitor to major public DNS
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providers like Google and OpenDNS. They're calling it the Internet's
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fastest, privacy-first consumer DNS service, which is kind of a lot of
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qualifiers. But according to third-party DNS analytics sites,
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DNS Perf 1.1.1.1 is either the fastest or nearly the fastest DNS across all
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regions. So let's show you guys how to switch to it. Cloudflare actually has
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step-by-step instructions for all of your devices right on their website. We're
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gonna have that linked below. But for your convenience, we've also included
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screen capture for the most popular platforms. They're all basically a
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variation of digging into your network settings and reconfiguring your
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DNS from auto to 1.1.1.1 with 1.0.0.1 as a backup. Advanced users with many
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devices in their homes may want to configure their router to manually use
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Cloudflare's DNS as well, which will save them the hassle of doing this rigmarole
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on each device individually. And that was it. But we wouldn't blame you guys for
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not wanting to switch to some newfangled DNS resolver.
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Before we've explained what that is and proven that it actually matters, which is
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why this video is not over yet. So then what does a DNS do? Well, humans remember
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and use domain names like google.com or Linus-techtips.com. But these pages
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actually live at an IP address like 104.27.140.189 or with IPv6. It's even harder to remember.
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Meaning that every time you type in a domain name, the translation to that page's
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IP address has to be looked up. But this is not as simple as flipping through a virtual
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rolodex. These records are decentralized and stored on the servers of multiple different
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registrars all over the world, which is why you need a service to look up correct IP addresses
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after you press enter. And since you can't start loading a page until you know
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where it is, using a slow, overloaded, or unreliable DNS server can noticeably slow
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down virtually everything that you do online. So to find out how much faster Cloudflare's
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option is, we used GRC's free DNS benchmarking tool. And the results are a little mixed,
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but also very promising. So the latency on retrieving cached pages, things that we have
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already searched for, was actually lower with our local DNS servers, which makes sense because
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they're physically closer to us. But when it came to uncached names and .com lookups,
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Cloudflare's servers came out ahead, especially when our primary DNS name server failed, since
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our secondary name server turned out to be dead, which slows things down, and our tertiary
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and quaternary name servers are Google's public DNS, which aren't as fast. But putting the
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numbers aside, one dot, one dot, let's just call it one dot, it felt faster. New tabs
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opened instantaneously.
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And videos on YouTube loaded more snappily than we were used to. Though it should be
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noted that this trick won't affect the video quality that you can play back at. That still
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depends on the bandwidth your connection is rated for.
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So then, how's Cloudflare doing this? Well, many factors affect the speed of a DNS query,
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but the biggest one is whether the server can retrieve the answer from a cache. If the
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domain IP address pair is already stored in your browser, you can't retrieve it. You'd
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have to do it manually. If it was a cache, you'd have to do it manually. If it was a
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cache, you'd have to do it manually. If it was a cache, you'd have to do it manually. If
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operating system, or DNS server, then your DNS resolver doesn't have to balance between multiple
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routes and registrars around the world in order to solve the query. So with OneDot, Cloudflare
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pre-fills their distributed cache out of band with popular addresses that you are likely to query.
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And they're also working to build out their network with the eventual goal of having
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every user within 10 milliseconds of at least one of their locations. In March alone,
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they enabled 31 new data centers all over the world, and they use fancy query techniques like
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aggressive negative caching to decrease the load on their system. So okay, good for them, but what
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if OneDot isn't faster than what you're already using? Is there any point switching to it? Believe
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it or not, yes, because there are privacy advantages as well. Even if you're visiting an
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HTTPS website, one that supports encrypted data transfer, the fact that you searched for
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that data transfer and then you're able to access it, that's a huge advantage.
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The fact that you're able to access that site in the first place is still known by your DNS resolver.
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This means that by default, your ISP, your mobile network provider, and every Wi-Fi network you've
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ever connected to have a comprehensive list of every site you visited while you're using them.
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While OneDot does actually need to log your IP address to prevent abuse and to debug issues,
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Cloudflare has committed with third-party auditing firm KPMG on retainer,
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to wiping all of their logs within 24 hours and never writing your IP address to a disk. So they
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actually won't know who searched for what sites. They use query minimization to ensure that they
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only reveal the specific data necessary to complete the query, and they support up-and-coming privacy
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standards like DNS over TLS and DNS over HTTPS. And while you might think that privacy isn't that
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important, consider that in 2014, the government of Turkey ordered the country's ISP to be
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censored Twitter by blocking DNS requests after a government corruption scandal leaked online.
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So in response,
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protesters actually spray-painted the IP of Google's DNS resolver all over Istanbul to help their fellow Turks get back online.
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So this video, sorry, it was kind of heavy, but thank you for making this far. In summary, using OneDot helps you browse faster,
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which is great, but also makes the internet more secure and open. And we think that particular aspect is
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priority number one, dot one, dot one, more ones.
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They're connected with capacitors, laser cups, and an RGB-lit ring, and their Fusion C40 gaming keyboard,
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and their Fusion C40 gaming keyboard,
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which features RGB LED backlighting, and you get a 4000 DPI optical sensor mouse,
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that apparently comes with that because it's a combo.
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ha ha
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That apparently comes with that because it's a combo.
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The more you know,
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Learn more and enter through our link in the video description.
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Ha ha
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The more you know,
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Learn more and enter through our link in the video description.
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So, thanks for watching guys if this video sucked, you know what to do.
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But if it was awesome, get subscribed,
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but if it was awesome, get subscribed,
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hit that like button, or check out the link to where to buy the stuff we featured, which was nothing.
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I don't know let's put like a network card down there.
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Anyway, also linked in the description is our merch store,
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which has cool shirts like this one,
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and our community forum, which you should totally join.