Open DNS

Open DNS ( opendns.com )

Hi Guys,

Check out the following: http://www.opendns.com/

They promise to speed up the net, make you safer & better looking. Well as for the later, I guess we can't improve on perfection. Anywho first got wind of this from the new PC World rag.

Take Care
rico

 

Hi Again.

Just changed my to Open DNS & wow, big improvement!

208.67.222.222
208.67.220.220

Rocks Rico

Take Care
rico

 

Looked it over a little bit, Do they have, and if they do, did you read their EULA and or privacy policy?

 

Hi Thunder,

I did read there "Privacy Policy" it seems ok to me. I never read the same for my my ISP. Did you see something scary when you looked it over?

Thanks & Take Care
rico

 

OT ON/
As i wanted to test the different speed, i searched for a soft which allows me to switch Internet/Network settings on the fly. I found 'Mobile Net Switch', which i can use with my Laptop in lots of ocasions. Rico, thanks to this thread i found this soft.
Info: http://www.mobilenetswitch.com/
OT OFF/

 

I've been using OpenDNS for a few weeks now and have had good results. I never though I'd say that I'm happy with something as trivial as DNS servers The automatic spellchecking is going to spoil me...

 

No, nothing really. Just a little paranoid of new freebies that are outside of my realm of control. Sometimes I will see a product or service that my gut tells me is just not "quit right". No real reason for it. I do give you a big for you having read the EULA though. Many are click happy and would not have bothered.

 

OT back ON/ Thanks Tommy. Going to give it a try myself. OT back OFF/

 

Is this freeware? Went to the site. One place it says never expires, nothing about purchasing. Then going to order it says 24 euro.

 

Its seams to be freeware and shareware, but has in the non registered version a startup-screen, the payed version doesn't has it. Regarding the webside there are _no_ limitations in the non payed version and does not expire.

 

Thanks for clearing that up.

 

very interesting. ive entered the opendns server IPs, so now ill wait and see if theres any improvement.

thanks for sharing Rico.

 

I too had setup openDNS, but last Friday night I was not able to reach this forum. I got the search page of openDNS...
I'm still waiting for their explanation.

 

i don't understand why you all trust this place?? have you all read up on it? i suppose you have. but, earlier today i issued a dig command (in linux) and the 'Query time' was alot slower then my ISPs nameservers. i didn't look anything up though, but i don't see how it can be quicker then an ISP DNS and be as accurate. are you using it because it's safer and it checks the top-level domain and corrects it if it's incorrect?

maybe i should read about it lol

 

its not that i trust it, im just trying it. ive no problems so far, though im unsure about how to "test" it.

voila:

 

So far, their sevice works as claimed for me. Haven't tried any deliberate spelling errors yet, but as for speed, they do seem substantially faster than my ISPs DNS servers. Time will tell.

What specifically would you be concerned about? If they were redirecting you or something like that, someone would have noticed that by now. About the only thing I can think of offhand is logging your activity and possibly sharing or selling that data. Then again, the DNS servers from your own ISP could be doing that and you would have no way of knowing.
Rick

 

it says similar services not ISPs. i still can't see how it can be faster then an ISP, it must use more hops. it can only be faster if the lookup is so quick at their servers it makes the extra hops redundant.

does anyone really understand it all? i don't.

nothing specific, i just thought if they are doing something to speed up the lookups then it might be more likely to be DNS poisoned. maybe they have extra software running which isn't safe, i don't know, i just wouldn't trust something like this, that's all.

 

Hi Guys,

Regarding OpenDNS so far its worked as stated, for me. Also along those same lines check out:

www.ntcanuck.com When I posted at Dozleng about OpenDNS an admin or moderator suggested this site.

The author of article I read in PC World, was the president of PIBMUG, "Pasadena IBM Users Group", so I'll jot him a note asking, what's known about safety/compromised, while using OpenDNS. I suspect it's okay or the author & PC World would be in deep do do. They had to do "due diligence" before publishing. I'll post any response I receive.

As Always

Take Care
rico

 

I appreciate that!
Hm, I assume that when Treewalk is installed, I could disable the Windows DNS service?

 

You can disable the windows dns service with nothing installed. it is an uneccesary thing that each application should be in charge of, not some global windows service that can be abused. Just my opinion though.

Alphalutra1

 

I don't see where they'd be any more likely to have a DNS poisoning than any other service. If what they're claiming is true, there may actually be less chance of running into DNS poisoning, assuming they don't have to connect to as many other DNS servers as often as others do. I don't recall if DNS poisoning is a problem on this kind of server or if the root servers are the ones attacked this way.
As for comparing them to an ISPs DNS servers, I've just made the switch to DSL from dialup service. Took a lot of phone calls to get all the problems sorted out. Should be in a separate thread called DSL horror stories. Anyway, when I compare it to my ISPs DNS, the most obvious difference is the lack of a delay from the time I click a link until my browser actually responds. With Open DNS, it's almost instantaneous. With my ISPs own DNS, there's about a 1-2 second delay most of the time. Maybe they're just having problems right now, so I'll switch back and forth for a while and compare them for a few weeks. So far, everything about Open DNS seems legitimate.
Rick

 

I have the same results as you with OpenDNS being about one to two seconds faster than my ISP's DNS.

Over the last few days I have done the switching back and forth a few times and so far OpenDNS has remained faster than my ISP. I will keep doing this randomly for a while to see if the speed remains the same.

Agreed... I looked over their privacy policy also and it seemed OK to me....

 

Excuse me...
When you test, do you clear the browser cache and Windows DNS cache?

Do you have an opinion about the Treewalk personal DNS server?

 

I don't know much about this. If you change dns servers, does your IP address change?

 

No, you just use a different lookup server for internet addresses.