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OpenDNS Upgrades Network, Rising To The Google Challenge

MikeCapone 17y ago
Yet one more example of why competition is good for the consumer. Lately the browser war has made me very excited (love the Chrome for Mac beta, can't wait for extensions). Hope this DNS war will go on for a while so that further improvements and innovations can be squeezed out.
davidu 17y ago
Just an aside, we're working on a strategy to widely deploy in India, Africa and Asia. South America continues to be a challenge but I think we have a solid plan for the regions I listed first.
- aristus 17y ago
  What are the challenges? High import taxes and high colocation costs? I don't know anything about your deployment but if you place servers in Sao Paulo, Montevideo, and Santiago (and Ciudád Mexico, for some values of "South America") you've got it pretty much sewn up, right?
- prakash 17y ago
  I would be interested in hearing more about your strategy. India: Are you planning to deploy at NIXI or at many of the larger ISP's, in which case, it's not very efficient. Africa: What countries other than South Africa, Egypt are you looking at? Asia: Are you looking at deploying at the Equinix in HK, Singapore; how about Japan/Korea? My email is in my profile, if you want to reply offline.
Apreche 17y ago
This would be nice if their DNS wasn't WRONG. Give me an NXDomain when I misspell something, not the IP of your ad server.
- timdorr 17y ago
  https://www.opendns.com/dashboard/settings/xxxxxx/advanced https://www.opendns.com/dashboard/settings/xxxxxx/advanced (where xxxxxx is whatever ID they give for your netblock). Uncheck "Enable typo correction (and NX Domain redirection)". If you're setting up OpenDNS, you should really be setting up an account with them too.
  - ajross 17y ago
    So, to be clear, in order to get the same (correct!) answers google is giving us for free, we should really be setting up an account and changing configurations from their defaults? And this sounds like a good plan to you?
    - houseabsolute 17y ago
      Sounds like you haven't been reading enough OpenDNS fud. If you had been, you would know that by using Google DNS you are at risk from a nebulous Google threat where they come to control your entire internetz experience.
    - timdorr 17y ago
      It sounds to me like I should configure a service when setting it up. You don't hook up a TV and just accept that the default settings are the best quality you're going to get. And OpenDNS isn't the default here anyways. You have to make a conscious choice to use them. Unfortunately, there's a disconnect between creating an account on their site and setting up to use their resolvers. Perhaps this would be resolved if they first redirected you to create an account when visiting the first website you go to? Much like a wifi hotspot with a login. At least then you would be prompted to create that account.
      - Apreche 17y ago
        It is true that if you use something, you should configure it. However, "Break the Internet" should not be an available option, especially not the default option. Malware avoidance, spelling correction, etc. are all good things. However, DNS is not the right way to achieve these things. Also, these things assume that you're only using the web. Let's say I open my IRC client, and mistype the domain of the IRC server. Guess what? Now I'm trying to connect to OpenDNS ad server as if it were an IRC server instead of getting an error instantly. Don't screw around with DNS. Resolve the names, and that's it. If you need extra functionality, put it somewhere else, like the browser or the search engine or the OS.
trezor 17y ago
Does anyone outside the US and China really care about non-ISP DNS servers? I'm honestly not trolling. This is a legitimate question.
- timdorr 17y ago
  I do when they're faster than my ISP ones (27ms vs ~60ms). Every millisecond counts. Oddly enough, when I use Comcast's DNS servers the speed at which Modern Warfare 2 connects to online games is drastically slowed compared to OpenDNS. I'm not quite sure why, but it's the most noticeable effect I've had switching over to OpenDNS.
- andyking 17y ago
  My ISP's DNS server (in the UK) quite frequently goes down or slow - it's useful to have an alternative to switch to. Normally, I change to OpenDNS then change back when the ISP one is back up to avoid the ads. However, since changing to Google DNS when my ISP DNS was down a couple of weeks ago, I've not actually bothered to change back. (edit: having seen davidu's comment on this page, I may try OpenDNS again, sans ads.)
- est 17y ago
  We do, only as secondary server.
- slug 17y ago
  I have a server/gateway outside the US and I prefer to use my own caching dns, since the ISP DNS sometimes is slow. Here in the US I configured my home router to use the google 8.8.x.x servers since my cable operator was hijacking the DNS queries, that is, until I send them an email kindly asking to remove me from their redirecting service. I assume that, sometime in the future, ISPs outside the US will start doing the same redirection, unless there's some law that prohibits them of doing so.

Yet one more example of why competition is good for the consumer. Lately the browser war has made me very excited (love the Chrome for Mac beta, can't wait for extensions). Hope this DNS war will go on for a while so that further improvements and innovations can be squeezed out.

davidu 17y ago

Just an aside, we're working on a strategy to widely deploy in India, Africa and Asia. South America continues to be a challenge but I think we have a solid plan for the regions I listed first.

aristus 17y ago
What are the challenges? High import taxes and high colocation costs? I don't know anything about your deployment but if you place servers in Sao Paulo, Montevideo, and Santiago (and Ciudád Mexico, for some values of "South America") you've got it pretty much sewn up, right?
prakash 17y ago
I would be interested in hearing more about your strategy. India: Are you planning to deploy at NIXI or at many of the larger ISP's, in which case, it's not very efficient. Africa: What countries other than South Africa, Egypt are you looking at? Asia: Are you looking at deploying at the Equinix in HK, Singapore; how about Japan/Korea? My email is in my profile, if you want to reply offline.

Apreche 17y ago

This would be nice if their DNS wasn't WRONG. Give me an NXDomain when I misspell something, not the IP of your ad server.

timdorr 17y ago
https://www.opendns.com/dashboard/settings/xxxxxx/advanced https://www.opendns.com/dashboard/settings/xxxxxx/advanced (where xxxxxx is whatever ID they give for your netblock). Uncheck "Enable typo correction (and NX Domain redirection)". If you're setting up OpenDNS, you should really be setting up an account with them too.
- ajross 17y ago
  So, to be clear, in order to get the same (correct!) answers google is giving us for free, we should really be setting up an account and changing configurations from their defaults? And this sounds like a good plan to you?
  - houseabsolute 17y ago
    Sounds like you haven't been reading enough OpenDNS fud. If you had been, you would know that by using Google DNS you are at risk from a nebulous Google threat where they come to control your entire internetz experience.
  - timdorr 17y ago
    It sounds to me like I should configure a service when setting it up. You don't hook up a TV and just accept that the default settings are the best quality you're going to get. And OpenDNS isn't the default here anyways. You have to make a conscious choice to use them. Unfortunately, there's a disconnect between creating an account on their site and setting up to use their resolvers. Perhaps this would be resolved if they first redirected you to create an account when visiting the first website you go to? Much like a wifi hotspot with a login. At least then you would be prompted to create that account.
    - Apreche 17y ago
      It is true that if you use something, you should configure it. However, "Break the Internet" should not be an available option, especially not the default option. Malware avoidance, spelling correction, etc. are all good things. However, DNS is not the right way to achieve these things. Also, these things assume that you're only using the web. Let's say I open my IRC client, and mistype the domain of the IRC server. Guess what? Now I'm trying to connect to OpenDNS ad server as if it were an IRC server instead of getting an error instantly. Don't screw around with DNS. Resolve the names, and that's it. If you need extra functionality, put it somewhere else, like the browser or the search engine or the OS.

trezor 17y ago

Does anyone outside the US and China really care about non-ISP DNS servers? I'm honestly not trolling. This is a legitimate question.

timdorr 17y ago
I do when they're faster than my ISP ones (27ms vs ~60ms). Every millisecond counts. Oddly enough, when I use Comcast's DNS servers the speed at which Modern Warfare 2 connects to online games is drastically slowed compared to OpenDNS. I'm not quite sure why, but it's the most noticeable effect I've had switching over to OpenDNS.
andyking 17y ago
My ISP's DNS server (in the UK) quite frequently goes down or slow - it's useful to have an alternative to switch to. Normally, I change to OpenDNS then change back when the ISP one is back up to avoid the ads. However, since changing to Google DNS when my ISP DNS was down a couple of weeks ago, I've not actually bothered to change back. (edit: having seen davidu's comment on this page, I may try OpenDNS again, sans ads.)
est 17y ago
We do, only as secondary server.
slug 17y ago
I have a server/gateway outside the US and I prefer to use my own caching dns, since the ISP DNS sometimes is slow. Here in the US I configured my home router to use the google 8.8.x.x servers since my cable operator was hijacking the DNS queries, that is, until I send them an email kindly asking to remove me from their redirecting service. I assume that, sometime in the future, ISPs outside the US will start doing the same redirection, unless there's some law that prohibits them of doing so.