How Quad 9 works on your Domain Name Server
9.9.9.9
What is DNS?
Every website lives at a numerical IP address. Your Domain Name Server, or DNS, translates these numerical IP addresses into readable domain names we all know and remember. If your DNS settings are not working correctly, or you’re still using defaults, you may be at risk for cybercrime and performance issues. Quad9 is a free security solution that uses DNS to protect your system against the most common cyber threats. It improves your system’s performance, plus, it preserves and protects your privacy. It’s like an immunization for your computer.
2M
~ 2 Million
Daily Average Blocks
18+
Number of Threat
Intelligence Providers
(All data as of 3/23/18)
114
Active
Resolver Clusters
How Quad9 works
Quad9 routes your DNS queries through a secure network of servers around the globe. The system uses threat intelligence from more than a dozen of the industry’s leading cyber security companies to give a real-time perspective on what websites are safe and what sites are known to include malware or other threats. If the system detects that the site you want to reach is known to be infected, you’ll automatically be blocked from entry – keeping your data and computer safe.
Quad9 is a free, recursive, anycast DNS platform that provides end users robust security protections, high-performance, and privacy.
Security: Quad9 blocks against known malicious domains, preventing your computers and IoT devices from connecting malware or phishing sites. Whenever a Quad9 user clicks on a website link or types in an address into a web browser, Quad9 will check the site against IBM X-Force threat intelligence that includes 800+ terabytes of threat intelligence data including 40B+ analyzed web pages and images and 17 million spam and phishing attacks monitored daily. Advanced analysis is performed on IP addresses to assign a risk score based on text, visual object recognition, optical character recognition (OCR), structure and linkages to other sites, and the presence of suspicious files to identify malicious IPs. This data feed combined with multiple other threat intelligence providers allows Quad9 to block a large portion of the threats that present risk to end users and businesses alike.
Performance: Quad9 systems are distributed worldwide in more than 70 locations at launch, with more than 160 locations in total on schedule for 2018. These servers are located primarily at Internet Exchange points, meaning that the distance and time required to get answers is lower than almost any other solution. These systems are distributed worldwide, not just in high-population areas, meaning users in less well-served areas can see significant improvements in speed on DNS lookups. The systems are “anycast” meaning that queries will automatically be routed to the closest operational system.
Privacy: No personally-identifiable information is collected by the system. IP addresses of end users are not stored to disk or distributed outside of the equipment answering the query in the local data center. Quad9 is a not-for-profit organization dedicated only to the operation of DNS services. There are no other secondary revenue streams for personally-identifiable data, and the core charter of the organization is to provide secure, fast, private DNS.
Free
Open
Private
As the project is refined and more capacity added to the infrastructure, there will be additional cities added worldwide to provide one of the widest geographic and network-topology overlays, providing maximum performance and fault resiliency.
The service exists to provide a more secure Internet for everyone. The three primary founding collaborators for the project have goals that are similar.