Cloudflare debuts 1.1.1.1, a free privacy-first consumer DNS service

Cloudfare announces 1.1.1.1, the “Internet’s fastest, privacy-first consumer DNS service”. The company announces it on April Fool’s Day but before you think it’s just a joke, it’s definitely not.

DNS, to those unaware, is the directory of the internet. Whenever you click on a link, send an email, open a mobile app, often one of the first things that has to happen is your device needs to look up the address of a domain. However, DNS are oftentimes slow and doesn’t ensure data privacy.

Cloudfare worked with APNIC, a Regional Internet Registery (RIR) responsible for handing out IPs in the Asia Pacific region. It is one of five RIRs that manage IP allocation globally: ARIN (North America), RIPE (Europe/Middle East), AFRINIC (Africa), and LATNIC (South America).

APNIC’s research group held the IP addresses 1.1.1.1 and 1.0.0.1. Even though the addresses were valid, there were so many people who had already entered them into various random systems that they were overwhelmed by a flood of garbage traffic. APNIC studied this garbage traffic but everytime they tried to announce the IPs, the flood would overwhelm any conventional network.

“We talked to the APNIC team about how we wanted to create a privacy-first, extremely fast DNS system. They thought it was a laudable goal. We offered Cloudflare’s network to receive and study the garbage traffic in exchange for being able to offer a DNS resolver on the memorable IPs. And, with that, 1.1.1.1 was born,” said Cloudfare CEO Matthew Prince.

The 1.1.1.1 IP will offer support DNS-over-TLS and DNS-over-HTTPS.

You may visit https://1.1.1.1/ from any device to get started with the Internet’s fastest, privacy-first DNS service.

Source: Cloudfare