Google gets into the DNS business

Google has launched a new service which it hopes will boost web speeds and performance for users.

The company has set up a public DNS service which users can configure to run through their own connections. DNS servers connect domain names with the physical IP address of a server, allowing surfers to navigate the web with URLs rather than the digits of the server.

DNS services are normally handled by the user's internet service provider, but Google claims that its public DNS service provides better performance than most service providers currently offer.

"The average internet user ends up performing hundreds of DNS lookups each day, and some complex pages require multiple DNS lookups before they start loading," wrote Google product manager Prem Ramaswami in a blog post.

"Our research has shown that speed matters to internet users, so over the past several months our engineers have been working to make improvements to our public DNS resolver to make users' web-surfing experiences faster, safer and more reliable."

Ramaswami said that the aim of the DNS service is not solely to accumulate customers, but to prompt ISPs around the globe to improve their own DNS offerings.

A similar call to improve DNS services came in 2008 when researcher Dan Kaminski uncovered a major security flaw in the protocol. Vendors sprung into action and many users and businesses began to pay greater attention to DNS servers.