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OpenDNS -- Anybody Using It?

The DNS system is the fundamental building block of the Internet, and a bunch of your time online is spent doing DNS lookups. Why not make that process faster? I was getting really slow lookups from my office's DNS servers (we're using the ones provided by the ISP). I recently switched to using the OpenDNS servers. My DNS lookup times are stupidly fast now (at least in my initial testing), and Open DNS protects me from phishing scams, as they block access to those sites.

Granted, I've only been using the thing for about two hours, so this is a limited bit of experience, but it seems much faster than Unicom's DNS lookups (we have a T1 through them at the office I'm at).

The one problem with the system is obviously the question of how OpenDNS makes money. If you incorrectly type in a domain (that it can't automatically correct, as it does fix many typos in your requests) it will send you to a search page that has ads on it. So obviously that's how they're making money, and I've yet to see if this causes problem with domain lookups.

As somebody who recently had a co-worker nearly get scammed by one of those sites, I'll be making these the name servers on at least one of the office networks I work at. But has anybody had experience with this setup, good or bad, that would cause problems?

Posted by Jake on 08/08/06 @ 10:43 AM
Posted in Cool, Geekdom | 2 Comments | Permalink
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2 Comments

John Roberts said on 08/08/06 @ 02:28 PM:
Thanks for using OpenDNS. You can see many more comments about OpenDNS at
http://www.opendns.com/who/press.php and then http://del.icio.us/pencoyd/opendnsmention/

We are very clear in our FAQ that we are a business and we do make money as you describe. If we cannot resolve a domain and we cannot fix a known typo (to help resolve it), then we deliver a search results page, with unpaid results and clearly labelled advertisements.

Cheers.

John Roberts
OpenDNS

Dave Goodman said on 08/09/06 @ 12:02 AM:
I've been using it about a week now, with no problems. I like the speed. :)

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