Speed Up Your Connection with a Better DNS
Posted by Jon Lee in Efficiency, tags: DNS, Efficiency, OpenDNS
Part of the backbone structure of the Internet is the DNS, the Domain Name System. It translates hostnames to IP addresses so you can type in www.google.com instead of 64.233.167.99. However, since there isn’t just one centralized DNS server, DNS servers are not updated in real-time. When a new domain is created or is told to point elsewhere, it takes time for the change to propagate to other DNS servers around the world.
Firsthand DNS Problems
Most likely, your Internet Provider (ISP) also serves as your DNS server by default. Depending on your provider, the DNS server entries may be updated as often as once every few hours up to once every few days. In my case, my ISP is notorious for poor DNS service. With my server move this weekend, I could not access my own site through my domain name for almost 12 hours. I’m sure some of you saw a blank page as well when trying to see the site.
A Free “Open” Solution
OpenDNS is a free solution for people that want a faster and more reliable DNS server. It offers several advantages over your ISP’s DNS server.
- Speed
They claim to have one of the fastest DNS caches around so you can instantly find what you are looking for. My own ISP can get very sluggish at times, taking a good 10-15 seconds just to resolve a domain name. 
Redundancy
OpenDNS is spread over 5 datacenters (4 in the US, 1 in the UK) with 2 more datacenters in the works around the world. With so many datacenters, you are guaranteed with redundancy in the case that one of the datacenters should fail. If your ISP’s DNS server goes down, then you’re pretty much out of luck. You won’t be able to resolve any domain names though you could still access sites directly through their IP address. However, due to the datacenter’s locations, OpenDNS currently heavily favors North American users since other users from around the world may suffer from latency issues.- Frequent Updates
OpenDNS updates their DNS servers often — no more waiting 24 hours for DNS to propagate (although other users would still have to wait until their own DNS servers get the new updates). - Security and Safety
Not only does OpenDNS automatically blocks phishing sites, but it can optionally block adult sites and/or proxies as well. This is perfect for parents and system administrators that don’t want to deal with expensive security and parental filter software. - Typo Correction and Shortcut Convenience
Ever type .cm when you mean .com? You can configure OpenDNS to automatically fix these typos for you. You can also create shortcut keywords to act as easy to access bookmarks.
Installation
You can either choose to change your DNS server locally (on your own computer) or on your network router (affecting everyone). No matter which way you choose, installation is as easy as entering 2 IP addresses in your DNS server box and literally takes 2 minutes. The two OpenDNS servers are:
208.67.222.222
208.67.220.220
You can optionally create an account (free) which will give you more features like the aforementioned parental blocking and custom shortcuts. Check out Getting Started page for more details.
Personal Experience
My ISP (I don’t want to mention any names) has very bad DNS servers. Most of the time they’re fine but when their servers get sluggish, it can take well over 10 seconds just to resolve a domain name. With OpenDNS, it has always been fast and it has never taken more than a few hours for a newly created or transferred domain name to display properly.
My one gripe with OpenDNS is that it breaks Firefox’s “I’m Feeling Lucky” functionality of the address bar. Before, typing a word or search term in the Firefox address bar will automatically take you to the first Google result. Now, OpenDNS will display a page with search results (and their ads). Although this can easily be circumvented (via Firefox extension), it turns out this search result page is OpenDNS’s primary, if not only, form of revenue so I can learn to live with it.
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