OpenDNS vs your ISP server

Recently I have been having some problems with my internet experience,I use Comcast Broadband cable and as of lately there are times when I can't not connect to the net.I have No Home page No browsing Just web pages errors can't not be displayed.Modem checks fine all lights of modem a system Go but I can not go any where.Then when I can connect surf a little bit and drops again and noticed during the times there is No activity blinking status light that should blink rapidly with activity but its Frooze solid.Then when all apears well again the activity light rapidly blinks.I call comcast support on numerous occasions and Half dozen service tech latter to tell me what I already know somethings wrong,Ya think.After numerous calls and many service techs latter, I insist its on there end servers they flat out deny are servers are fine.OK lets look at the evidence the modem was replaced the cable line was replaced.the input signal coming in is strong yada yada yada.I have been reading some about openDNS and came across some blogs of folks experiencing the same thing I was, Hmm what do ya know same problems sams ISP,Server related I think so. seems my hunch was correct because not only am I using OpenDNS with No more connection issue's and I discoverd My speeds are Fast and consistent. No more peak Hour bottleneck slow Downs and to boot the security settings from openDNS are fantastic.Sorry for long winded here just had to vent.

 

About a year ago I arrived at work one day to find an IT guy working on our network. I asked him what the problem was and he said he was trying to find alternate DNS servers because our ISP’s servers were being attacked with denial of service attacks. I asked him if he ever tried Open DNS and he said no. So he set up our network to use Open DNS servers and bingo, problem solved. AFAIK our city/county government is still using Open DNS today. I use it at home as well with the same good results. Of course I never would have heard of Open DNS either if I hadn’t found Wilders.

 

Can you give a simple explanation of "OpenDNS" and where I can look it up?
Is it intended for a company?
Can an individual use it?

 

OpenDNS

It's great, can be used by anybody, home or business.

They have lots of explanatory info on their website, look at the bottom under "Use OpenDNS" for instructions. You don't have to "create a free account" if you don't want to, btw.

 

OpenDNS is a free DNS service alternative to the DNS servers provided by your ISPs. DNS translates a website's address in letters (such as wildersecurity.com) to a numerical IP address (such as 65.175.38.194) The URL to OpenDNS is at http://www.opendns.com/

No, it's not particularly targeted toward companies. Anyone can use it.

OpenDNS can also give you more than just DNS. (Although that's all I use it for.) If you register with OpenDNS, it is also capable of filtering content (this service is linked to an specific IP address and is NOT cookie based.)

 

Just found this, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDNS

What is your take? Privacy issues and covert redirection?

 

The only thing I really didn't like about OpenDNS is the redirection when searching. I'd be okay if they used Google, but they currently use Yahoo!, which is not very good, IMHO. Other than that, the service seems to be excellent.

 

The OpenDNS servers are a good alternative if your ISP's servers are problematic or flakey at times... I have done the same myself in the past to get thru rough periods with ISP upgrades and so on. I don't really find them any faster than a good cable ISP, in fact, somewhat slower if the ISP's servers are working right. But it's nice that the alternative is there when you need it.

 

Well that make me a little nerves but I shell see How it goes.

 

yes I hate yahoo my self.YAHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

 

Here's another alternative which also gives you caching.... it's very good:

http://ntcanuck.com/

 

Ah thanks,I will bookmark that one for future ref.

 

In Ubuntu, the equivalent is 'bind9' in the repositories... you can install bind9 and set it up to use the OpenDNS servers if you want. I did that when I noticed some delays in browsing in Ubuntu and it speeds everything up nicely. There is a little help for it on the OpenDNS site, shows you how do set it up. For Win, Treewalk works well also.

 

I did not know that and good to know.Thanks

 

Yes, TreeWalk is very reliable and effective at curing any ISP's DNS problem/slowdown. I am using it for the last 3 years with zero problem on windows XP.

 

treewalk doesnt seem to have been updated recently.
it says it runs as a win32 service.
guessing it wont work on 64bit vista?

 

It certainly wasn't made with x64 in mind, but I suppose you'd have to actually try it to see if it installs and works. It might....

Edit sometime later: I found a thread just now, apparently someone had it running on Vista x64 back in April. For some reason the link didn't work, but it's on the Treewalk Support forum. There are instructions for it there...

I can't get it to turn into a clickable link here, but this is the url to it:

http://forums.treewalkdns.com/readmessage?id=<d36e96e$6315a5c8$ee1f@news.treewalkdns.com>

 

Can you explain what you mean by this? The only time I see something like a search coming up is when I mistype something and they inbuilt correction function cannot fix my mistake. No big deal - normal searching is done via my preferences in the browser.

 

In Firefox, when you use the address bar for searching (or if it accepts something the browser does not understand) instead of the search bar, OpenDNS will redirect the searches to their own one. You can configure Firefox so that it won't do it.

 

Treewalk works fine under XPx64, I don't know about Vistax64 but after Open DNS came out, it has been quite reliable and therefore I find no need for Treewalk anymore.

 

Here OpenDNS works just great!!!