OpenDNS
July 11, 2006
Yesterday I discovered a free service called openDNS, essentially a free, alternative DNS that anyone can use. You might question why you would bother to change your DNS servers as the ones provided by your ISP may already be good enough but openDNS has a few nift features and claims that make it very viable.
Faster
Utilising a large caching system, blended with geographically distributed servers, it’s possible to get the fastest results from the servers that are closest to you. I have to admit though that from googling around there are a few areas on the globe where it might be slower to use openDNS but looking at what they have planned that won’t be an issue in the future.
Whilst I’ve been using it I’ve noticed some lookups have been noticeably quicker which is nice as being on a 10mb connection DNS lookups are sometimes the slowest part of connecting too and loading up a website.
Safer
I’m not entirely sure how they do this but openDNS will actively tell you when you visit a phishing site that’s trying to obtain your information. I did a few tests to verify this and it does actually work!
Smarter
This is probably one of my favourite features. Whilst most browsers now can add in www. and .com if you don’t type them in, what they don’t do is change .cmo to .com or .og to .org. OpenDNS does exactly that, it will see if you type something incorrectly and if applicable automatically correct it and send you on your way.
Genius! You can find out more about OpenDNS on their website.
Feedback?
If you’ve found errors or have some feedback please . Comments aren’t currently enabled due to spam but I’m sure they’ll return in the future.