DNS Problems on Excitel Broadband

[john_dud]

If you configure dnscrypt-proxy you can still use non excitel dns. I've configured it on my windows desktop & linux laptop and it works well.

 

[angryduck]

Problem with the approach however is that regular DNS servers don't work with dnscrypt. And, as far as I know, there is not a single dnscrypt server available in India. Also, secondary server is not supported at the moment. So this could, at times, be problematic to some I guess.

I'm happy with it though. Installed straight into my router instead of each device individually and it works great.

 

[john_dud]

I don't seem to be experiencing any problems on this approach, would you elaborate a bit? And both google dns and opendns use anycast so that you get best performance.

 

[angryduck]

@john_dud well, first of all, dnscrypt absolutely does not support Google DNS. I'm not sure why you mentioned that. Also, the regular (208.67.222.222) OpenDNS server is not supported either. Only the ones that are listed here. And yes OpenDNS does use AnyCast but I don't really like their logging policy. So I only stick with one of the DNSCrypt or d0wn servers.

 

[john_dud]

Google dns was an example I know they don't support dnscrypt. You could use adguard dns, they have no logging or opennic dns as they have dns server in India and have no logging.

 

[angryduck]

Yeah those Adguard servers are new. Hadn't seen before. I will consider switching to one of them. But another reason I usually preferred DNSCrypt servers is because of the DNSSEC validation. And for my usage, their European servers have mostly worked fine. Will consider Adguard or OpenNIC if it ever becomes too problematic.

 

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[john_dud]

Generally any service in Germany & Netherlands region works well for me, better than anything in US region anyway. And I think you'd want to stay away from adguard dns servers as my dnsleaktest revealed yandex & opendns servers behind their setup.

 

[angryduck]

True. Denmark and France have also been reliable enough.

And thanks for the information! Adguard is out of the list then

 

[john_dud]

It seems Google DNS does support dnssec
Does Google Public DNS support the DNSSEC protocol?
Yes. Google Public DNS is a validating, security-aware resolver. All responses from DNSSEC signed zones are validated unless clients explicitly set the CD flag in DNS requests to disable the validation.

Source:

https://developers.google.com/speed/public-dns/faq

 

[Sushubh]

And it's down again.

 

[Excitel]

Several users may know about public DNS servers and might experiment with them, but at the same time, they are not having enough capability to select the best suited DNS server for themselves, in most cases. In such cases, if the chosen DNS server stops working, or the latency to it, increases, the overall user experience, degrades. Some users might even find this to be a problem on our (Excitel's) end.

This is why we prefer to take this burden and provide a DNS service that works all the time and with predictable parameters along with ensuring a high level of service quality. Of course, this comes with the risk that if our DNS servers stops, then users would suffer; but we're ready to take this risk because we believe that ultimately, this is better for our customers.

Furthermore, there's another, very important aspect to this. Many Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) rely on the use of a proper DNS server (which is a part of the ISPs IP pools) by the end users, to effectively determine the best delivery mechanism and shortest distance/latency node to serve traffic to our users. For example, Akamai, that serves local, Indian content from several platforms (including Hotstar, live cricket) depends heavily on a proper DNS configuration and if the ISP doesn’t enforce their own DNS, and the customer configures some other public DNS server, the Akamai-zed content will be delivered from some NODE far away from the ISP (from ISP users) which will greatly spoil the user experience and furthermore, this will be accounted as Transit traffic, and therefore, would be delivered at the normal internet speed (based on the package) and not the peering speed. In such a situation, we would then be unable to guarantee a proper peering experience/speed to the end-users as promised by the plan that they are using.

 

[Sushubh]

soon. we found that 99% of our customers accessed only these 100 websites. we have optimized our network for best performance on these websites. to avoid unpleasant behavior at customer's end, we have blocked access to the unoptimized web.

 

[proton8454]

Already stop with this parentalistc style of treating the customers. Instead provide uninterrupted raw power to the users and let them do what they want. Never knew unlimited no FUP internet came with these sort of riddles.

 

[akapur]

"Our users don't need a public IP"

"We will provide all the DNS for them. It's super amazing till it goes down for hours"

Honestly, having used excitel for about 2 months now, there is no way I would recommend anyone to use this as their main connection. If you must use it, take the cheapest plan they offer and use it only to download.

 

[Sushubh]

Yup. I switched to 1699 plan for 3 months to show 'support' for what they are doing. Now I am on 799 plan waiting for the major fiasco which would force me to dump them for good. Den Boomband seems to be offering 300mbps plans in my sector 😱 It might not be unlimited but I can certainly buy bandwidth in bulk that suits my usage at reasonable rates.