DNS hosts

[Theguywhobea]

Alright, so I got to thinking. How do companies that host DNS servers make money from it? I assume Google and Cloudflare aren't hosting these servers out of the goodness of their hearts, and with all the people connecting to and using them I assume they must have quite a load on them. So how do they make money from these services?

[Lurick]

Depends but some of them collect anonymous statistics and other information to not just make the product better but make other products they sell better. Some offer paid versions of the service (eg. OpenDNS/Umbrella) for a few bucks a year if you want more visibility into your own network's traffic, added protection such as advanced filtering, etc. and I'm sure there are a few out there that just scrape all the data and sell it to third parties or even hijack queries and redirect you to their ads and whatnot.

[2FA]

2 minutes ago, Theguywhobea said:

Alright, so I got to thinking. How do companies that host DNS servers make money from it? I assume Google and Cloudflare aren't hosting these servers out of the goodness of their hearts, and with all the people connecting to and using them I assume they must have quite a load on them. So how do they make money from these services?

They don't really but DNS servers are necessary for the Internet to function as it does currently so without them, they wouldn't be making any money.

[Arthur Dent]

Most of the big providers of DNS servers, also operate CDNs (content delivery networks). These are highly dependent on reliant and predictable (i.e. without your ISP tempering with the queries and answers) operation of DNS server, i.e. for routing traffic to nearest nodes or using cheapest paths. Having a lot of users on their own resolvers allows for much finer control of these request routings.

 

Of course gathering statistics and usage patterns of users is always a benefit of providing such a services. Remember, if its free you're more likely the product than the consumer.