It’s pretty cool when a client of yours designs a way for the Internet to work better. Last week Neustar hooked up with Google to design an improvement to the Domain Name System (DNS), a fundamental protocol that makes the Internet work. Neustar is the leading provider of managed DNS services for companies and sovereign nations. In December Google cannon-balled into the DNS space with the launch of Google Public DNS, and the company is getting increasingly involved with DNS. I talked about this in a December post.
Unbeknownst to each other, both companies had been working since the middle of last year on a way to improve the geo-targeting abilities of DNS. Geo-targeting is important for DNS to minimize latency and provide the best online experience for the user. For example, if I send a web query from my home in Alexandria, it’s better it get answered by an authoritative source somewhere in the DC area, as opposed to one in St. Louis or Seattle. The way this is currently done is by DNS looking at the IP address of the recursive server I’m using — usually but not always provided by my ISP.
Sometimes that is good enough to geo-target query responses and online content delivery effectively. But not always. For example, anyone using a VPN is showing a recursive IP address from the home office, not their real physical location. And mobile browsing really changes the picture, now that Americans are actually doing it using devices like the iPhone. Depending on where you are located that instant, your carrier may be handling your queries in the best way to save money, not in the best way for your online experience.
So, what Google and Neustar are proposing is that each query now include a piece of the END USER IP address, not the recursive server being accessed. Content delivery is faster and more efficient if the location closest to the consumer is returned by the authoritative server. Neustar wants this on behalf of the hundreds of major Internet brands it handles DNS for, and Google no doubt is thinking about better/faster/smarter advertising delivery.
It’s a pretty logical, incremental extension to what DNS does now, and the companies jointly presented the proposal to the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) on Wednesday 1/27. Here’s a link to the proposal, here’s a link to Google’s Code Blog with their full explanation (check out the comment stream for some really interesting reactions), and here’s a good piece by Cade Metz of The Register. If accepted, the new extension would be voluntary and recursive DNS providers would not have to change if they don’t agree.
There’s no telling how long the IETF will vet this and hopefully decide to approve. There will no doubt be some opposition along the “if it aint broke, we don’t have to fix” line. But with the future looking more mobile all the time and with so many activities migrating online that require robust DNS, this sort of innovation should be encouraged and applauded.
