New "OpenDNS" Service

[ChrisBrightwell]

I learned today of a new service on the 'net.

http://www.OpenDNS.com/

From their site:

DNS is what allows you to type in a web address and end up at a website; DNS is transparent and yet fundamental to the operation of the Internet. There are two sides to DNS, the authoritative side which give out answers and the recursive side that ask questions on your behalf and holds onto them in case you ask again.

OpenDNS provides the latter, the world’s first highly-available, high-performance recursive DNS service customized with features to make the Internet safer, faster and smarter for you.​

I just switched my entire network over to their DNS service and have noticed a moderate speed boost for my efforts.

The real win will come when my grandma or my sister comes and asks me what "phishing" is and why their computer is trying to tell them about it.

If you manage any number of computers, I urge you to give this service a shot. I just spent a few minutes talking to John Roberts (their VP of Product Development) and this project is really promising.

Picture it as a "neighborhood watch" for the internet.

I've read the privacy policy and every piece of documentation I can find. I can not think of a single reason to *not* try what these folks are offering.

 

[Makosuke]

Hmm... sounds like a very good idea, but I'm going to let it sit for a while before I go bleeding edge. I'm wary of anything that messes with DNS resolution. Some part of me says I'd rather get scammed by ebays.com or whatever than have somebody deciding what is and isn't a valid DNS lookup, or rewriting what I typed in based on what they think I wanted.

Regardless of what their privacy policy says, there's also an incredible potential for datamining abuse. Call me paranoid, but if the government is willing to have AT&T datamine millions of phone calls, why not have a company like this keep an eye on DNS requests and who makes them? Not that they couldn't (or wouldn't) do the same with big ISPs, but this bypasses having to work out a deal with any established company, and gets all those.

I am VERY interested in this for one business I've been working with that has had an incredibly annoying issue where DNS lookups on their Macs take an inordinately long time (2-5 seconds), where lookups on Windows on the same network are quick. The problem apparently has something to do with the speed at which the DNS responses come back, but I've tried every tip on the 'net I could find without luck. Perhaps their "super fast" DNS servers will help. Worth a shot, anyway.