Why it might be a good idea to use Open DNS

I decided to read more about open dns after I read Evertons article “Does open dns really speed up web pages” on his great website connected internet. He was trying to find out why a dns service that was using servers in the United States would be faster than the dns service offered by his own internet service provider. The connection to the latter is of course faster than the connection to the open dns servers - so, why would it be faster or even more reliable ?

This was partially answered in the comments by John Roberts (according to the Open DNS website the VP of Product Development) who confirmed that the connection itself naturally takes longer (in milliseconds) but that the open dns servers were optimized to make up for it. This would of course only be an advantage if the servers of the ISP would not be that optimized. The open dns team soon opens a new server location in London which should speed up things for European users. (not saying that they are slow at the moment, they will just be some milliseconds faster with the server in London). You see what I mean if you traceroute a server in the United States and Europe.

But it is not speed that I would like to talk about. Speed is important but not everything. Open Dns offers two features that your normal ISP does not offer. First, it has a automatic phishing detection routine which warns if you attempt to visit a website that was marked as a phishing website. They do rely on more than one source for up to date information, a nice feature.

Second they do fix typos. Try to access a website like www.ghacks.ne and you will automatically be redirected to the correct site. If the typo does not have one solution but more than one a list of possible results will be shown. Nice as well.

They also offer another feature that they are not writing about on their website, maybe because they are unaware of it. Listen up, hehe. Some countries decided to ban domains by banning the dns entries of those domains. If you use the dns of a provider in that country you will not be able to visit that website unless you use the IP address instead.

Another dns server fixes that problem. You are free and ready to visit the website and it will show itself completely. Free Speech at its finest. You might want to try their service if you are living in a country that uses this (weak) method to censor content on the web.

The open dns team published a great guide on how to setup the new dns server on your system and / or router. It normally is only a matter of seconds to enter new dns servers. After that is done you are already using the open dns servers.

If you run into troubles you should try the faq section of their site which has answers to common difficulties.

Oh, I would prefer answers from Allison Rhodes instead of John Roberts if the open dns team wants to comment on this. She just looks that much cuter than him (see for yourself)