Why OpenDNS?

The Domain Name System (DNS) is one of the the major components that makes up the Internet. A domain name is the address you type into your browser to reach a website, for example "www.lifeintech.co.uk". This is important because it allows web sites to assign meaningful names to web servers, independent of their physical location. For example LifeinTECH is hosted out of the US by Squarespace and is stored on a server with the IP address: 65.39.205.54, however I am in the UK and therefore have assigned the website the Domain Name "www.lifeintech.co.uk", which makes it easier for people to find and remember my site.

Essentially the DNS distributes the responsibility of assigning domain names and mapping them to IP addresses by designating authoritative name servers for each domain. To learn more about DNS I recommend you start with the Wiki Page.

DNS works by querying a DNS server for the required IP address information. Your default DNS server will normally be from your local Internet Service Provider (ISP) and configured automatically via DHCP. However you can easily overwrite this information, which is exactly what I recommend you do.

OpenDNS offers DNS resolution for consumers and businesses as an alternative to using their ISP's DNS servers. This has three key advantages:

Performance & Reliability

• OpenDNS has a globally distributed network that was designed specifically for DNS. It relies upon large cache's of the domain names which allows OpenDNS to process queries much quicker, thereby increasing web site retrieval speed.
• Technologies such as Anycast routing makes the Internet more reliable, reducing the number of intermittent outages.
• OpenDNS employs a system known as "SmartCache" which works when an authoritative DNS provider suffers an outage, this would normally result in all of the Web sites it provides a service to becoming unavailable to everyone on the Internet. Thankfully this type of failure won't affect OpenDNS users as the OpenDNS servers will immediately look for the last known good address for the site in their caches, and use that to load the site. This type of service is not available anywhere else.

Security

• Industry-leading anti-phishing protects everyone on your network from fraudulent phishing scams.
• Award-winning Web content filtering gives you the power to block up to 50 categories of content.
• Detailed statistics empower you to understand your network traffic and spot trends before they become problems.
• OpenDNS is able to detect known virus's such as the notorious Conficker. This adds an additional level of security to your network and allows you to quickly manage an outbreak before it propagates too far.

Control

• Browser Shortcuts let your users map a short search term to a long URL via the address bar.
• Typo correction auto-corrects the most common typos in top-level domains.
• OpenDNS Guide provides helpful search results when your users try to visit a website that isn't resolving.

The switch to OpenDNS could not be easier, simply re-configure your DNS network settings with the two OpenDNS addresses: 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220. You can either change your settings on a per-computer basis (great if you only have a couple of computers) or update your Internet router (useful if you want your whole network to use OpenDNS, including any guests that connect).

Please find below the details on how to update an individual computer's DNS settings. For Internet router updates please consult your manufacturers website as different devices will involve a slightly different process.

Mac (OS X)

Open "Network" from "System Preferences". Select "Advanced > DNS" and replace any existing addresses with the two OpenDNS addresses: 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220. You may need to re-configure your TCP/IP setting to manual before you can proceed. To do this just add manual IPv4 information that sits inside your local area network address schema (copy the information that has already been given to you via DHCP).

Windows (XP, Vista, 7)

Open "Network Connections" and right click "Properties" on your live network interface. From the "Network Connection Properties" select "Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4)" and click "Properties" (if you are on an older Operating System these options may have slightly different names). From here select "Use the following DNS server addresses" and add the two OpenDNS addresses: 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220.

For the most up to date information on OpenDNS be sure to check out their blog.