1.1.1.1 is a free

Domain Name System The Domain Name System (DNS) is a hierarchical and distributed naming system for computers, services, and other resources in the Internet or other Internet Protocol (IP) networks. It associates various information with domain names assigned t ...

(DNS) service by the American company

Cloudflare Cloudflare, Inc. is an American content delivery network and DDoS mitigation company, founded in 2009. It primarily acts as a reverse proxy between a website's visitor and the Cloudflare customer's hosting provider. Its headquarters are in Sa ...

in partnership with

APNIC APNIC (the Asia Pacific Network Information Centre) is the regional Internet address registry ( RIR) for the Asia-Pacific region. It is one of the world's five RIRs and is part of the Number Resource Organization ( NRO). APNIC provides numb ...

. The service functions as a recursive name server, providing domain name resolution for any host on the

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...

. The service was announced on April 1, 2018. On November 11, 2018, Cloudflare announced a mobile application of their 1.1.1.1 service for Android and iOS. On September 25, 2019, Cloudflare released WARP, an upgraded version of their original 1.1.1.1 mobile application.

Service

The 1.1.1.1 DNS service operates recursive name servers for public use at the IP addresses listed below. The addresses are mapped to the nearest operational server by

anycast Anycast is a network addressing and routing methodology in which a single destination IP address is shared by devices (generally servers) in multiple locations. Routers direct packets addressed to this destination to the location nearest the sen ...

routing. The DNS service is also available for Tor clients. Users can set up the service by manually changing their DNS resolvers to the IP addresses below. Mobile users on both Android and iPhone have the alternative of downloading the 1.1.1.1 mobile application, which automatically configures the DNS resolvers on the device.

DNS64

1.1.1.1 supports recursive DNS service for IPv6-only networks with use of NAT64.

Technology

1.1.1.1 is a recursive DNS resolver. Cloudflare runs an authoritative DNS resolver with a network of over 20 million Internet properties. With the recursor and the resolver on the same network, some DNS queries can be answered directly. With the release of the 1.1.1.1 mobile application in November 2018, Cloudflare added the ability for users to encrypt their DNS queries over

HTTPS Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) is an extension of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). It is used for secure communication over a computer network, and is widely used on the Internet. In HTTPS, the communication protocol is enc ...

( DoH) or TLS ( DoT). Later on, a VPN tunnel was implemented based on

's own BoringTun, a

user space A modern computer operating system usually segregates virtual memory into user space and kernel space. Primarily, this separation serves to provide memory protection and hardware protection from malicious or errant software behaviour. Kernel ...

implementation of WireGuard written in

Rust Rust is an iron oxide, a usually reddish-brown oxide formed by the reaction of iron and oxygen in the catalytic presence of water or air moisture. Rust consists of hydrous iron(III) oxides (Fe2O3·nH2O) and iron(III) oxide-hydroxide (FeO( ...

Prior usage of the IP address

Technology websites noted that by using as the

IP address An Internet Protocol address (IP address) is a numerical label such as that is connected to a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication.. Updated by . An IP address serves two main functions: network interface ident ...

for its service, Cloudflare exposed misconfigurations in existing setups that violated Internet standards (such as RFC1918). was not a reserved IP address, yet was abused by many existing routers (mostly those sold by

Cisco Systems Cisco Systems, Inc., commonly known as Cisco, is an American-based multinational digital communications technology conglomerate corporation headquartered in San Jose, California. Cisco develops, manufactures, and sells networking hardware, ...

) and companies for hosting login pages to private networks, exit pages or other purposes, rendering the proper routing of impossible on those systems. Additionally, is blocked on many networks and by multiple

ISPs An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides services for accessing, using, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, non-profit, or otherwise private ...

because the simplicity of the address means that it was previously often used inappropriately for testing purposes and not legitimate use. These previous uses have led to a huge influx of garbage data to Cloudflare's servers.

Cleanup of and

The IP block was assigned in 2010 to

; before this time it was unassigned space. An unassigned IP space, however is not the same as a reserved IP space for private use (called a reserved IP address). For example,

AT&T AT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered at Whitacre Tower in Downtown Dallas, Texas. It is the world's largest telecommunications company by revenue and the third largest provider of mobile te ...

has said it is working on fixing this issue within its CPE hardware.

WARP

In September 2019, Cloudflare released a

VPN service A virtual private network (VPN) service provides a proxy server to help users bypass Internet censorship such as geoblocking and users who want to protect their communications against data profiling or MitM attacks on hostile networks. A wide va ...

called WARP which is built into the 1.1.1.1 mobile app. WARP is built around the WireGuard protocol. It replaces the connection between your device and the internet, however, WARP is not a traditional VPN and will not allow you to access geo-restricted content.

WARP+

WARP+ routes your internet traffic into less congested pathways using Cloudflare's own private backbone called Argo, which makes it much faster than basic WARP. WARP+ is a limited data plan, to get more data to use WARP+ you must refer more people to use the service.

WARP+ Unlimited

WARP+ Unlimited is a paid monthly subscription service to secure more data to use for WARP+ without any data limits.

References

External links

* {{Official website, https://1.1.1.1/
The Cloudflare Blog

Cloudflare Docs: Setting up 1.1.1.1

Cloudflare Docs: 1.1.1.1 Public DNS Resolver
Alternative Internet DNS services Internet properties established in 2018 IP addresses Cloudflare