OpenDNS Experiences

I was reading or listening to a podcast (can’t remember now) a while back about OpenDNS and thought I’d give it a try. The idea behind OpenDNS is that it claims to provide faster internet connectivity, increased reliability, and protect against fraudulent sites. All of this done for free. You simply need to change your primary and secondary DNS settings to the following IP addresses:

• DNS 1: 208.67.222.222
• DNS 2: 208.67.220.220

I ended up configuring my router so that all computers on the network would benefit from the OpenDNS settings. While I didn’t do any formal speed tests, web sites did seem to load faster. Ultimately, I ended up setting my router back to it’s default settings. Here’s are some reasons why:

1. I found it annoying when OpenDNS would try to help me out with misspelled URLs.
2. I have concerns about privacy since all my web traffic is routed through OpenDNS.
3. OpenDNS does not play well with Virtual Private Networks (VPN). You can jump through hoops to get this to work, however.

This might be a nice upgrade for the non-tech crowd and general web surfers but not for me. If you search the web for other articles on OpenDNS, you’ll find that the general opinion seems to be a mixed bag.

2 Comments to OpenDNS Experiences

1. 

   Glad you tried OpenDNS.

   Just a few comments on your post.

   Web traffic is not routed through OpenDNS. Only DNS traffic is, and our privacy policy is quite clear. http://www.opendns.com/privacy/

   Without an account, the personal data (IP address connected to requests) is removed in a couple of business days. With an account, you can choose to NOT have data stored at all (in fact, that’s the default). There’s more here:
   http://blog.opendns.com/2007/07/23/privacy-policy-update/

   Our customers incline towards the technical, actually.

   We’ve been available to the public since July 2006, and I’ve tagged more than 1,100 mentions of OpenDNS (including this one! ;-).

   http://del.icio.us/pencoyd/opendnsmention/

   John Roberts

   VP of Product, OpenDNS
John Roberts on December 1st, 2007
2. 

   Based on John’s comments above and a recent podcast with David Ulevitch, founder of OpenDNS, I decided to give OpenDNS another try.

   I also created an account this time around but left most of my OpenDNS Dashboard controls off as I’m still interested in speed improvements. According to the podcast interview, the more services you turn on in your OpenDNS Dashboard, the slower your response time is (albeit not by much).

   The Dynamic DNS feature within the OpenDNS Dashboard is kind of cool too although I don’t have a strong use for it just yet but like the idea that I could create a public IP in which I could connect to my home network from the outside.
Brooke Kuhlmann on March 14th, 2008

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