The last time we talked about Cloudflare, we discovered that the company uses the random pattern of lava lamps to protect 10 percent of the Web. However, yesterday it made an announcement that could increase that percentage within weeks. Thanks to a special agreement with APNIC (regional Internet registry for Asia and the Pacific), Cloudflare just launched 1.1.1.1, a new DNS service that, besides being faster than Google and OpenDNS, also aims to offer greater privacy, deleting all logs within 24 hours.
The adventure of this project begins with a small story of privacy and censorship. In March 2014, the Turkish government decided to block Twitter to prevent details about a corruption scandal from being shared online. The block was carried out with the "collaboration" of local providers, who rejected all DNS requests directed at twitter.com. The population's response was to take to the streets and paint Google's DNS on walls, 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4, leaving the authorities embarrassed. The people at Cloudflare, convinced that they can develop a more robust alternative in DNS servers, contacted various experts, and the number one demand was privacy. Logs are kept for a long time, but Cloudflare accepted the challenge, confirming that its new DNS will purge logs in 24-hour cycles.
The next problem was finding easy-to-remember DNS addresses, and that led them to APNIC, whose research group controls the 1.1.1.1 and 1.0.0.1 addresses. Technically both addresses are valid, but many people on the Internet entered them as "dummies" in routers and other systems, generating a huge amount of useless traffic. Every time APNIC tried to study it, it came close to collapse, so the agreement with Cloudflare is that the company will offer its network to analyze traffic, in exchange for being able to use both addresses in its DNS. The result is a faster service than its direct competitors Google and OpenDNS (28 percent according to DNSPerf), more secure, and with special support for DNS over HTTPS designed for developers.
How to Configure It on Windows
Configuring Cloudflare's 1.1.1.1 DNS on Windows requires the same steps as any other similar service. The easiest way is to go to the Control Panel, enter "Network and Sharing Center", click on "Change adapter settings", view the Properties of the network interface by right-clicking on it, enter the properties of "IP version 4", and set 1.1.1.1 and 1.0.0.1 as primary and secondary DNS. On the other hand, if your connection is already based on IP version 6, the addresses are 2606:4700:4700::1111 and 2606:4700:4700::1001. This works only for one computer, and repeating the process on each PC, smartphone, and/or tablet becomes tedious in record time, so we recommend setting the configuration at the modem or router level, in their corresponding DNS Server sections. If you need detailed instructions for macOS or Linux, you will find them on the official page below.
