Cloudflare made its private domain name service (DNS) generally available.

The web giant's Internal DNS translates internal hostnames into the private IP addresses used by applications, databases, service endpoints, and other resources that be guarded from exposure through the public internet. Cloudflare touted it as a single platform to manage public and private DNS resources, enforce DNS policies, and gain visibility across customers' entire DNS stack.

This combats fragmentation and system drift caused with separate platforms for public and internal DNS, the use of cloud-native DNS services inside each cloud environment under separate security policies per each, and the complexity of split-horizon DNS that aim to synchronize multiple DNS environments so internal and external users receive different responses for the same hostname.

The offering is comprised of two elements: Gateway Resolver and Internal Authoritative DNS.

The former receives DNS requests from users and devices, determines how those requests should be handled and applies security and routing policies, with the ability to filter queries, block them, or instead redirect them to different resolution sources according to Cloudflare Gateway’s policy expressions. It also supplies centralized logs and audit data and uses its 1.1.1.1 resolver when dealing with public internet domains.

Internal Authoritative DNS stores and serves the definitive records for an organization’s private DNS zones. It is built on Cloudflare’s existing authoritative DNS platform, allowing Cloudflare to combine an established authoritative service with the recursive resolver and policy capabilities already present in Gateway.

Customers configure the system through internal zones, kept for private resources; DNS views, which combine the zones that a particular set of users or devices should be able to resolve; and resolver policies to deal with requests.

Cloudflare said Internal DNS works with any Cloudflare connectivity method that routes DNS traffic through the Gateway Resolver. For enterprises running Cloudflare WAN, each device on the connected network can resolve internal hostnames through Cloudflare without requiring the Cloudflare One Client agent on individual devices, doubling down on the service's consolidation promise.

"More importantly, Internal DNS is not a standalone DNS service. It extends the same Connectivity Cloud platform that organizations already use to secure users with zero trust, connect networks with Cloudflare WAN, accelerate applications, and protect internet-facing services," Cloudflare claimed.

The offering is free of charge for enterprise customers through Cloudflare's secure web gateway (SWG) service.