Liquid Telecom to compete with Google in offering Africa DNS server addresses

Liquid Telecom has announced that their DNS server addresses can be used in Africa, and that they can be used by, people in the continent, in place of Google’s DNS server addresses.

The announcement was made by Liquid Telecom’s head of IP strategy, Andrew Alston, while speaking at the third Africa Domain Name System (Africa DNS) Forum, at the Sarova Panafric Hotel, Nairobi. He said that their addresses are localized and would thus have some benefits.

“This is Liquid’s official offer to the continent, everyone knows of Google’s 8.8.8.8 and/or 8.8.4.4, and they are being used all over Africa. Your subscribers are using those addresses, so liquid decided that we really needed an African version of this that was on continent and low latency.” Mr Alston said.

Liquid Telecom was the connectivity partner at the forum, as they had provided free WI-FI for the three day event.  A point Alston mentioned when informing attendees that their addresses were fully functional.

The provision of the WI-FI was made possible, by Liquid, as the company had configured the Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) in the conference room with their addresses.

“The addresses are; 5.11.11.5 and 5.11.11.11, they are there, they are useable, and you have been using them for the last three days, because those are the servers that are configured on the DHCP in this room.” He continued.

Apart from the room, Mr. Alston said that their servers can be located in certain countries with expansion to one more country set to come:  “The servers currently have instances in; Kenya, Zimbabwe, South Africa and London, four instances at the moment. We are also going to add Zambia shortly.”

“You can use them today, your clients can use them, obviously there going to work best if you pair with liquid telecom, your subscribers can use them. You can put them in your DHCP and distribute them to your clients. Its up to you they are open, they are public, they are free; they wont cost you anything,” he added.

The Africa DNS Forum ran from 6th to 8th July 2015. The forum, held under the themed “The future of Africa’s domain name industry: opportunities and challenges” discussed how the domain name space in Africa can be improved for all stakeholders.