OpenDNS

bledd · 26 Feb 2009 at 13:07

oh ok, so it would therefore ignore the router's setting

still I can set it up using that, and use Tomato blocklists for some other sites

mynsa · 26 Feb 2009 at 13:19

well it totally depends upon the how the client is configured.

I am going to make the following presumptions, correct if wrong:

network is using DHCP
router is using opendns as dns server, router is dns server with open dns set to be the forwarder.

Under dhcp a client (just focusing on windows network settings here) can choose whether to use the dynamic ip address given to itself by the dhcp server and whether or not to use the dns information given to itself by the dhcp server.

Most people will just automatically use both, but if you have someone with an IT background who is getting blocked by opendns filters, im sure they will put 2 and 2 together and consider changing the dns server the client is referencing to circumvent the filtering.

Juniper · 26 Feb 2009 at 13:43

I've been thinking of making the change to these myself as Virgin can be a bit flakey at times

NathanE · 26 Feb 2009 at 13:58

bledd. said:
oh ok, so it would therefore ignore the router's setting

still I can set it up using that, and use Tomato blocklists for some other sites

He could block outgoing WAN UDP port 53 traffic coming from the LAN on the router though. That would prevent PC's on the LAN using anything but the router as their DNS.

mynsa · 26 Feb 2009 at 14:00

NathanE said:
He could block outgoing WAN UDP port 53 traffic coming from the LAN on the router though. That would prevent PC's on the LAN using anything but the router as their DNS.

True, i never thought of that

Burnsy2023 · 26 Feb 2009 at 14:20

NathanE said:
He could block outgoing WAN UDP port 53 traffic coming from the LAN on the router though. That would prevent PC's on the LAN using anything but the router as their DNS.

I need to do that and setup OpenDNS as a forwarder.

MarcLister · 26 Feb 2009 at 23:48

I have used OpenDNS in the past but thought I'd give Be* DNS servers another go.

I wonder how many people in this thread are Be* users. It seems that whilst Be* is a popular ISP their DNS servers are not highly regarded?

When I used OpenDNS in the past, I never actually signed up. I will do this now and see what benefits I get and if it works better for me than just using their DNS servers.

Sin_Chase · 26 Feb 2009 at 23:53

I wonder how many reds they get for selling on usage trends

(I'm assuming they do, they might not!)

rz30 · 27 Feb 2009 at 00:57

nice tip, just tried and it seems slightly quicker loading pages.

NathanE · 27 Feb 2009 at 12:30

MarcLister said:
I have used OpenDNS in the past but thought I'd give Be* DNS servers another go.

I wonder how many people in this thread are Be* users. It seems that whilst Be* is a popular ISP their DNS servers are not highly regarded?

When I used OpenDNS in the past, I never actually signed up. I will do this now and see what benefits I get and if it works better for me than just using their DNS servers.

I'm with Nildram. Whilst Nildram used to have absolutely stellar DNS servers back in the old days ever since they were purchased by Pipex they turned to pot. Presumably because they just decommissioned their own DNS servers and pushed the requests onto Pipex's. Then when Pipex got bought out by Tiscali I suspect that Pipex just pushed all their DNS requests onto Tiscali. So that's 3 "invisible hops" that's DNS requests with Nildram are having to jump through.

Been using OpenDNS for a few days now and web pages load much more reliably now without timing out and me needing to sigh and press F5...

bledd · 27 Feb 2009 at 15:01

thanks for the info (not a jesus.jpg) Nathan

MarcLister · 27 Feb 2009 at 16:58

NathanE said:
I'm with Nildram. Whilst Nildram used to have absolutely stellar DNS servers back in the old days ever since they were purchased by Pipex they turned to pot. Presumably because they just decommissioned their own DNS servers and pushed the requests onto Pipex's. Then when Pipex got bought out by Tiscali I suspect that Pipex just pushed all their DNS requests onto Tiscali. So that's 3 "invisible hops" that's DNS requests with Nildram are having to jump through.

That sounds pretty poor.

NathanE said:
Been using OpenDNS for a few days now and web pages load much more reliably now without timing out and me needing to sigh and press F5...

That sounds good for you.

Do you see this benefit only on new sites you go to, or all your websites?

SteveS · 27 Feb 2009 at 17:02

i been using for awhile,. never even used my isps from beginning,
i signed up but never saw anything for these silly search page..?

SteveS · 1 Mar 2009 at 12:26

anyone tell me where it is to turn off their search?

NathanE · 1 Mar 2009 at 13:36

Go into the OpenDNS Dashboard.

Then select your Network.

Then click Settings on the Network.

Then click Advanced Settings on the left hand side.

Now untick the following options on the list:

- "Enable typo correction"
- "Enable filtering of .cm wildcard"
- "Apply my shortcuts to this network"
- "Enable OpenDNS proxy"

Then click Apply and wait a few minutes for the changes to take affect

ethos · 1 Mar 2009 at 21:50

I'm thinking about moving over to this from using root hints at work...

Teki187 · 1 Mar 2009 at 22:25

Thanks for the information.

Been using it this afternoon.

Not sure if its a coincidence but web pages are loading faster.

mrk · 2 Mar 2009 at 10:45

Tomato only allows 3 entries for static DNS, I assume this won't matter? or is this the wrong area as I cannot find an area similar to the stock Linksys firmware section!

NathanE · 2 Mar 2009 at 10:47

Won't matter. All of those IP addresses get routed to the same server in London anyway... unless there is an outage. In which case they'll probably get routed to their server in the USA east coast.

mrk · 2 Mar 2009 at 10:52

Ah cool,

Just found out also that Tomato supports OpenDNS updating via dynamic updates so even if the IP changes from VM due to brief disconnection or whatever OpenDNS will be updated on the ntework with the correct IP for the stats/filtering!