The FBI back in November managed to close down a botnet that was created with the help of a malware called DNSChanger. In operation since 2007 it grew to a size of nearly 4 million infected computer systems of which about 500,000 were located in the United States. The operators manipulated the DNS system of [...]

Categories: Security, Software, Windows

DNS servers play an essential role on today’s Internet. They translate domain names into IP addresses. Without them, users would have to enter IP addresses directly to access sites on the Internet. Most Internet users are using their Internet Service Provider’s DNS server. While that is often a convenient solution, it can have consequences. Some [...]

Categories: Software, Windows

Back in 2009 I reviewed one of the first public versions of DNS Jumper, a portable program for Windows that allowed you to change the system’s DNS with the click of the mouse button. The application back then was released during the “dns craze” where Google and other big players like Symantec entered the market [...]

Categories: Software, Windows

One of the areas that a lot of computer users do not bother to optimize is the domain name server (DNS) of their Internet connection. A mediocre DNS not only slows down the connection speed on websites and Internet servers in general, but can also be the cause for connection issues and even censorship. Selecting [...]

Categories: Software, Windows

You may know that I bought a website recently. One of the things that freaked me out in the early days of being a webmaster was moving a website to another host or server. Why? Because of all the things that could go wrong. Set the wrong nameservers for instance and your site won’t be [...]

Categories: Web Development

DNS Data View is a graphical user interface alternative to the nslookup tool that ships with the Windows operating system. It can be used to display DNS records for one or multiple domain names. The program uses the DNS server of the active Internet connection by default, with options to switch to another DNS server. [...]

Categories: Software, Windows

DNS speed and reliability made the news last year when Google introduced their own open DNS system that every Internet user could make use of. The topic has lost much of its forward momentum since then and has taken the backseat once again. DNS in layman terms is used to “look-up” IP addresses of domain [...]

Categories: Linux, Mac, Software, Windows

The domain name system is a naming system for computers and other devices connected to private computer networks or the Internet. One of its most important tasks is to translate domain names (e.g. ghacks.net) into IP addresses that computer use for communication purposes. Most Internet users use their Internet Service Provider as the DNS provider, [...]

Categories: Security, The Web

Taking a cue from Martin’s helpful article (see “How do I find my IP Address“) I thought it would be a good idea to offer the same information for the Linux operating system. But with Linux there is one issue to get around – that of the number of different tools available to use to [...]

Categories: Advice, Linux, Networks, Open Source, Operating Systems, Security, Software, Tutorials Basic