Google announces free public DNS servers.

03 December 2009

It could be said that DNS is one of the services which underpins the Internet by translating hostnames (like drwho.virtadpt.net) into the IP addresses which are actually used under the hood (such as 66.93.100.253). Unless you remember the IP addresses of the sites you usually visit or you have them hardcoded on your system, if your local DNS isn't available there isn't a whole lot that you can do online. Scattered around the Net are publically available DNSes that you can configure your machine to use in the event that something goes wrong with your ISP (which would not impact connectivity per se, only your computer's ability to resolve hostnames). Everyone's favorite pre-Singularity lord and master Google has brought their own public DNSes online for everyone to make use of should you desire to (or in case your ISP is doing something hinky, like filtering your net.access by controlling DNS). If privacy and/or anonymity are your concern I strongly suggest that you check out the Google Public DNS Privacy Policy, which lays out what they will and will not record and how long they'll keep it for.

For the record, the IP addresses are 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4.