The Global Internet Speedup effort promises to make web pages load faster by giving content delivery networks more detailed information about users' locations
Google, OpenDNS and various content delivery networks have formed the Global Internet Speedup initiative, a project aimed at helping web pages load faster than before.
Announced on Tuesday, the scheme changes the way domain name system (DNS) requests are made.
The DNS translates meaningful web addresses, or URLs, into
computer-friendly IP addresses, and the new idea is to make that
happen as close to the user as possible.
"Google is committed to making the internet faster — not just
for our users, but for everyone," Google engineer Dave
Presotto said in a statement. "We will do that any way we can, by
improving protocols, browsers, client software and networks."
The Global Internet Speedup group, which includes content delivery
networks (CDNs) such as Edgecast and CDNetworks, has come up with a
new standard called 'edns-client-subnet', which has been proposed to
the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).
The proposed standard adds a part of the user's IP address to
the DNS requests the user's computer makes to OpenDNS or Google
Public DNS servers, if they are using those companies' services. The added
data is just enough to provide the approximate location of the user,
and helps participating CDNs to direct the user to their nearest
content server.
As this process happens now, the user is directed to the content
server closest to their DNS server, rather than to their computer. If the
user and the DNS server are far apart, this can mean relatively slow
page load times.
Google, OpenDNS and the rest of the project's participants have all implemented the
new system, which Google first mooted in January 2010 when it published a proposal to extend the DNS protocol.
"We're very excited to team with Google and the world's leading
CDNs on such a significant improvement to the speed of the internet,"
OpenDNS chief executive David Ulevitch said in the statement. "The
initiative we've partnered on is based on open standards that any
other network can adopt, making this technology available to
anyone."
Privacy concerns
According to the Global Internet Speedup website, privacy concerns have been taken into account. People trying to visit web pages make two requests:
a DNS request and an HTTP request, which results in the content being
loaded from a web server.
The initiative we've partnered on is based on open standards that any other network can adopt.
– David Ulevitch, OpenDNS
"HTTP requests already include the full and complete IP address of
the requester and always have," an FAQ reads. "Now, with
edns-client-subnet, a portion of the user IP address is included in
the DNS response. This is information that was not previously included
in the DNS requests."
The FAQ notes that, if the website in question runs its own DNS, it
will already know the extra information being disclosed. If it uses a
different provider for DNS services than for web services, that DNS
provider would get extra information.
"It's not clear if this is a good idea and therefore recursive DNS
providers [who fully answer DNS requests by querying third-party name
servers if needed] are encouraged to only implement edns-client-subnet
with services who provide combined DNS and HTTP so that no new
third-party is introduced to even a portion of the user IP address,"
the FAQ reads.
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