OpenDNS

NathanE

NathanE

NathanE

Soldato
Joined
21 Oct 2002
Posts
18,022
Location
London & Singapore
Got fed up with my ISP having such flakey DNS servers that seemed to just randomly reject like 1 in 10 requests. So I did something about it and told my router to point to OpenDNS instead.

Won't bore you all with "placebo this and placebo that" that but yeah it does seem more stable now :D

Also if you make an account on their website they have a few useful controls on there like filtering of certain categories of sites (pr0n for example).

If you don't sign up then they will redirect all invalid requests, like say "sdasdfsdfsdfsdfsdfsdfsdfwerwerw.com" to their portal to provide search queries. But once signed up it's just a case of unticking that box. In fact I unticked basically everything except phishing and botnet protection.

If anyone is interested:

208.67.222.222
208.67.220.220
208.67.222.220
208.67.220.222

^ don't let the optical illusion fool you, there really are 4 unique IP's there...
 
use them all the time with clients, especially the filtering, didnt know about the extra two IPs mind you, thanks
 
quick question, as i know little about DNS..

would this effect online gaming pings? or is that totally different...
 
Won't affect pings.

DNS is all about turning "www.foo.bar.com" into "123.123.123.123"

For what ever reason some ISPs (like mine) have totally crap DNS servers which are either slow or just randomly reject requests every now and then.
 
Been using OpenDNS since I signed up with Be* a while ago, great service and they are adding new features quite regularly.
 
bledd. said:
so in layman's terms, it's a MASSIVE hosts file for the internet :)?
Click to expand...

No, its a DNS server (well multiple DNS servers). These can perform forward or reverse lookups and forward requests to DNS servers if either the OpenDNS server doesn't have knowledge of a specific domina, or it needs to talk to a DNS server that has authoratitive control over domains, or to root-hint servers.

The end result is similar to that of a HOSTS file, but is dynamic.
 
Been using OpenDNS for years now, from way back when Plus.net's own DNS servers were horrific. Beyond the "Google incident" a few weeks ago, they've been absolutely sound.
 
I recently swapped over to OpenDNS as I got fed up with Be*'s DNS servers constantly causing problems, them then changing it and making it no better.

Im pleasently surprised with OpenDNS so far, a lot quicker and as you said comes with filter controls and stats. I dont know why you would want to filter out p0rn tho! :) Thats one of the great legacy's of the internet.
 
NathanE said:
Got fed up with my ISP having such flakey DNS servers that seemed to just randomly reject like 1 in 10 requests. So I did something about it and told my router to point to OpenDNS instead.

Won't bore you all with "placebo this and placebo that" that but yeah it does seem more stable now :D

Also if you make an account on their website they have a few useful controls on there like filtering of certain categories of sites (pr0n for example).

If you don't sign up then they will redirect all invalid requests, like say "sdasdfsdfsdfsdfsdfsdfsdfwerwerw.com" to their portal to provide search queries. But once signed up it's just a case of unticking that box. In fact I unticked basically everything except phishing and botnet protection.

If anyone is interested:

208.67.222.222
208.67.220.220
208.67.222.220
208.67.220.222

^ don't let the optical illusion fool you, there really are 4 unique IP's there...
Click to expand...

Been using OpenDNS for over a year now, definitely a lot better than BTs crappy DNS :)
 
I guess theres no way of me using OpenDNS if I'm in Uni halls? I've got a problem where I type in "www.google.com" for example, and the page cannot be displayed until I simply refresh :/
 
benjo said:
I guess theres no way of me using OpenDNS if I'm in Uni halls? I've got a problem where I type in "www.google.com" for example, and the page cannot be displayed until I simply refresh :/
Click to expand...

I dont think that would be possible as you have to put the DNS servers into the routers config. Unless this is wrong and there is another way around it?
 
Been using OpenDNS for about a year now.

Every now and then there are intermittent slow downs with page requests but its nothing to moan about.

Very happy with it. Especially being able to filter out stuff.
 
+1 for OpenDNS, used them on my previous Virgin cable connection and now my BE ADSL connection - apart from the Google incident mentioned above they have been rock solid. Much better than a lot of ISP's own DNS servers in terms of speed - the extra features rock too for free :)
 
cool,

i'll change over to it tonight

my mum's been asking about setting up a wireless connection for her holiday cottage that she rents out, opendns seems like an awesome way to control the content :)
 
bledd. said:
cool,

i'll change over to it tonight

my mum's been asking about setting up a wireless connection for her holiday cottage that she rents out, opendns seems like an awesome way to control the content :)
Click to expand...

on a side note:
dont forget that you can point to any dns servers on a client
 
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