Is OpenDNS doomed?

NathanE

NathanE

NathanE

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http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-10408624-264.html?tag=newsEditorsPicksArea.0

Google wants to speed up a key part of the Internet's inner workings called the Domain Name System and is inviting technically savvy folks to try their ideas out.

CNET News PollWill you use Google's DNS?
Google is offering to be a faster middleman in a key part of surfing the Web. Will you sign up?
Yes, every microsecond counts
Only if they completely open-source it
No, keep Google's prying eyes away
DNS? What's DNS?




View results
The DNS is a crucial part of the Internet. It converts the text addresses people can remember into the numeric Internet Protocol addresses actually used to locate information on the Internet. For example, CNET.com's IP address is 216.239.122.102.

When you visit a Web page, a DNS server that's part of a vast distributed network often must perform that conversion--called resolving a host--many times. With the Google Public DNS service, Google wants to be that server.

"Our research has shown that speed matters to Internet users, so over the past several months our engineers have been working to make improvements to our public DNS resolver to make users' web-surfing experiences faster, safer and more reliable," said product manager Prem Ramaswami in a blog post introducing the Google Public DNS service.

Google's search service already has made it central to the workings of the Internet. If its DNS service becomes popular, Google could become even more significant.

For those who want to give it a whirl, Google posted instructions on using the Google Public DNS service. For those worried about what traces your Web surfing will leave in Google's records, check, the Google DNS privacy page
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Looks like Google is basically setting up a service like what OpenDNS offers... except of course Google will use your surfing habits for even more privacy invasion.

http://code.google.com/speed/public-dns/docs/using.html
 
Speed is clearly a placebo effect imo.

Other than ISPs who have really really crappy DNS servers I have never had anything but lightning quick resolution times from my ISPs with a response time no other DNS service can match without a local presence (without traversing non-ISP hops).

I get the added benefits of using a service like OpenDNS for web filtering etc but for day to day general use I bet most people would not notice any speed difference. Most peoples browsing habits will be cached locally anyway.
 
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I love google managed to secure 8.8.8.8 IP address.

Like Sin Chase said, I've never had a need for another DNS other than the ISPs one.
 
J.B said:
I love google managed to secure 8.8.8.8 IP address.

Like Sin Chase said, I've never had a need for another DNS other than the ISPs one.
Click to expand...

They must have pulled some strings to get that :p That IP class has been gone for a long time.. Even RIPE registers it as belonging to IANA..

Since I work for an ISP and I built our DNS servers, they are lightning quick :D

[Edit] \o/ w00t! Welcome back Mr Christmas Smilie!
 
Well, opendns hijacks your nxdomain (last time I checked), google tracks your surfing. On balance I prefer google. Personally I use a couple of my dev boxes in a datacenter as my caching server with ISPs as backup (and it's an ISP I used to work for, so I know how they work). But I'd have no problem using google's if I needed some (and with those easily memorable IPs I suspect i will in the future), the privacy aspect is probably overblown...
 
OpenDNS's proxy can be turned off if you sign up. I've set mine up so its just plain old vanilla flavoured DNS. No frills.
 
NathanE said:
OpenDNS's proxy can be turned off if you sign up. I've set mine up so its just plain old vanilla flavoured DNS. No frills.
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So then you're likely in the same boat as google with them tracking your requests, so you've got to have serious problems with your ISP's servers to bother really...
 
So if you dont use there search engine they can still log what sites you visit.

Google really are trying to be the rulers of the internet!
 
bigredshark said:
So then you're likely in the same boat as google with them tracking your requests, so you've got to have serious problems with your ISP's servers to bother really...
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Which I do.

Nildram, er Pipex, er no Tiscali, er still no.. TalkTalk... their DNS servers are crap. They randomly reject or don't respond to requests so every few times you click a hyperlink you get a white page from IE saying the DNS lookup failed.

I'd rather OpenDNS spy on me than Google.
 
Personally I'd rather google had the data, I've no idea what openDNS are doing with it while google are pretty closely watched on privacy.

But that's at least partly because I (along with a lot of ISPs) have a dim view of open DNS for hijacking the nxdomain, which is simply in violation of the protocol. I also think web filtering of the type openDNS offer is misguided idiocy of the highest order. Paul Vixie has written a decent recent criticism of this and more...and I'd take his opinion (he wrote BIND after all) over most people's.
 
I was with Nildram for around 5 years and don't remember many major problems. Bear in mind they did have different ones, originally in dialup and early ADSL days it was on their 195.149 range but they they brought out a couple on the 213.208 range specifically for adsl customers which people may or may not have switched over to. That's not to say they were completely reliable but I don't remember it ever getting to the stage where I felt it warranted looking for another solution.

Obviously some kind of free/open dns server is worth having as a backup though.
 
HangTime said:
I was with Nildram for around 5 years and don't remember many major problems. Bear in mind they did have different ones, originally in dialup and early ADSL days it was on their 195.149 range but they they brought out a couple on the 213.208 range specifically for adsl customers which people may or may not have switched over to. That's not to say they were completely reliable but I don't remember it ever getting to the stage where I felt it warranted looking for another solution.

Obviously some kind of free/open dns server is worth having as a backup though.
Click to expand...

The issues only started about a year ago. Once Tiscali started taking control of services.
 
Giving it a go instead of Virgin Media's primary, seems pretty nippy to me ... which is ultimately all I really care about.
 
I've been using opendns for a good while now, it's been a lot more stable than their native dns and faster which is all i care about.
 
One thing I do like about OpenDNS is that they don't cache records for very long. Residential ISPs still seem to be caching records for quite some time.
 
Is google providing the same service as openDNS do were you can filter your results and things?

If not I wonder how long it will be until they do start doing this?

EDIT
Just read David Ulevitchs blog, it appears they are not.
 
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