What do you mean by faster? I can’t help but wonder if it is a pseubo effect. DNS lookup is measured in the milliseconds for most internet configurations I have experienced. If a particular host has a lousy DNS configuration that is something else.
Use Firefox or Flock typing in the address bar, and the implicit Google’s “I’m feeling lucky†will get you good results often with less typing than OpenDNS's tyop correct. The phishing feature is novel but also coming in Firefox 2.0 .
Scott Beale
· 3 years ago
Lloyd, by faster, I mean noticeably speeds up my connection. No pseudo effect here, it's the real deal. And yes, my ISP, Comcast, has had DNS problems. What ISP are you testing from (I assume you have tested it before commenting here)? My guess is that it will not always make a difference.
According to their website, they plans for expansion beyond the US. Where are you seeing that it is a US only solution?
I wouldn't look at this as Firefox/Flock competition, but another service to use in addition to those resources.
Jackson West
· 3 years ago
I've got SBC DSL, and after the configuration, have certainly noticed no decline in service. I figured that my Bloglines browsing would be a big DNS draw -- since the images for 500 blog posts from 100 domains might take a while to resolve. I did test it on my 'tech' folder, but couldn't really tell if it was any faster. Granted, my DSL is pretty slow to begin with, so I may not be noticing a few milliseconds here and there.
Biao
· 3 years ago
I got to know about OpenDNS from my friend who went to high school with Ulevitch. I tried it out and it works fantastically. It was most noticeable for me when loading a myspace page which I assume requires multiple HTTP gets.
David Kaye
· 3 years ago
When Comcast gave me trouble I simply added DNS entries of friends of mine who run servers. And then there are always the DNS entried for companies like SBC, should theirs not be fast enough.
As for caching, Windows has a DNS cache process that is turned on by default, so commonly used URLs first check the local machine's DNS cache before going outside to the DNS server anyway. In short, I have had little problem with DNS, even when Comcast was having its problems.
This guy's idea may be good, but I really don't like using a DNS server I don't trust. This is where malware comes into play. I remove DNS hijackers from customer computers every day, so I'm not so keen on somebody's private DNS server, especially if they plan to serve ads.
Pat Phelan
· 3 years ago
Tried it. It has made a very marginal difference probably around .002 Meg down improvement but hey everything helps. thanks
DP
· 3 years ago
It seemed like OpenDNS was slower for me. My ISP is Optimum Online (cable), and I live in Westchester County - New York.
dready
· 3 years ago
Actually, the typo-correction and anti-phishing features are on an opt-out instead of opt-in basis. I have some technical comments on my blog entry: http://dready.org/blog/item/70/
Scott Beale
· 3 years ago
Thanks for catching that. I've updated the post.
DP
· 3 years ago
DP -- Thanks for telling us. We're definitely improving connectivity on the east coast this week and next. Should be a dramatic difference.
-david
David Ulevitch
· 3 years ago
I clearly meant to put "David Ulevitch" as my name.
Clearly low on caffeine. :-)
-david
Steve Collins
· 3 years ago
I'd argue that the US-centric position put by Lloyd above doesn't hold true. I've switched to using OpenDNS here in Australia after reading this post. Response time on a number of things seems hella fast.
I'm with one of the bigger 2nd-tier (and VERY geek-friendly) ISPs here who generally get it all right - Internode (www.internode.on.net). I've never had issues with their DNS, but I think OpenDNS may be somewhat quicker, even from here.
David, how about putting a server in Australia?
Lloyd D Budd
· 3 years ago
Hi Steve Collins, Interesting. Response time relative to what? what do you enjoy about it?
Søren
· 3 years ago
The "probably around .002 Meg down improvement" comment indicates you might need to clarify what you mean by "faster". OpenDNS won't increase your internet bandwidth, but it will make web surfing *snappier*. It will resolve domain names into IP addresses faster than letting the requests propigate. MySpace is a particularly good test case: a lot of people hotlink images from websites all over (not to mention the ads) and there could be a few dozen domains to resolve.
Strange Scott, I did not see your comment previously.
I did give it a try. I did not find any difference, but I never found myself thinking "this DNS look up is slow". I am sure people's mileage will vary.
Today, it seems to be a US only solution.
I don't see it as competition to browsers at all, but I don't think it is currently a general or practical solution.
Though I find it intriguing, the technical details don't really add up to me either. It is not my experience that most DNS servers are slow.
David Ulevitch
· 3 years ago
Lloyd,
There's nothing about us that's US-only (except the language on our website). Networking on the net is a funny thing where network topology and global geography don't always intersect where you think they do.
For example, it's likely that folks in Australia would have better connectivity to us in Palo Alto or LA than they would in Tokyo. Might not make sense, but google for "Southern Cross Cables" and you'll start to figure it out.
Lots of areas in Africa are on Sat connections that backhaul into the US or Europe. We're in the last steps of bringing up our POP in London which will pretty much give us the European coverage we need. A future site at AMS-IX or similar would just add redundancy (see recent RIPE presentation at NANOG on route overlap between LINX and AMS-IX locations for K-Root).
About DNS being slow, well, of course, ymmv. Then again, when your DNS is down, you'll know. :-)
Thanks, David
Lloyd D Budd
· 3 years ago
Hi David,
It is great if you are positioned to have a global service including local languages. Where your service would be consistently faster than a "local provider" would lead me to complain to the provider. I am sorry, DNS is not magic, and never been a perceived issue for me, particularly not a bottle neck.
I have experienced plenty of outages, but I guess I am lucky that it has never been isolated to DNS, Lloyd
Graham Freeman
· 3 years ago
I set up my in-laws in British Columbia with OpenDNS, and we saw an immediate and very noticeable improvement in DNS resolution. Telus, their DSL ISP at their home and at their Vancouver office, apparently has quite slow+unreliable recursive DNS servers. I didn't actually measure anything, but my in-laws are happy so I'm happy. :)
Graham
Hylas Ipsum
· 3 years ago
No worries here, Comcast is our provider and we went to OpenDNS the first day for our business connections (we host our sites here at the laughingsquid). Nothing but BlueSky. Trust? You "trust" Comcast? Man are you in for a suprise. They're screwed, blued and tattooed by the tier 1 SysAdmins they use, I've been looking for a way out for years. We'll see how this pans out, so far so good. Hylas
Michael Carter
· 3 years ago
I am using an iMac with Charter Broadband. During peak hours my internet connection was incredibly slow, but with OpenDns, it runs about 5 times faster.
Nabeel
· 2 years ago
I agree with DP, I'm also Optimum Online in westchester, lookups seem slower.
David Ulevitch
· 2 years ago
Hi Nabeel,
Thanks for letting us know. If you'd email me a traceroute to the IPs you're using that'd help me a lot.
I'm david [atatat] opendns [dotdotdot] com
Esa Loyva
· 2 years ago
I thought I was going nuts....Firefox would time out before the page started to load, even my emails would sometimes not send before Outlook express timed out. I'm with Telus in BC Canada. A friend told me about the problem dns servers ( he works for Telus as an ADSL service person.) Changed to Open DSN and now pages open almost immediately instead of 30 to 40 secs. Works great Thanks.
Michael
· 2 years ago
I have actually noticed a decrease in speed. I have Qwest in Phoenix, AZ. I don't see any reason to run OpenDNS any longer. Firefox delivers all the same features that I would use. Keywords, typo correction, and phishing protection. I have no use for domain blocking at home.
Anthony Hoppe
· 1 year ago
I work for the Menlo Park City School district. We recently were experiencing very slow external DNS lookups. I stumbled across OpenDNS, added their DNS servers to the forwarders list of our DNS servers (removed all others), and BAM! External name resolution is almost as fast as internal name resolution. It has really brought some life back to our tiny T-1 line (which is soon to be upgraded)!
steve garfield
· 1 year ago
I have Comcast in Boston.
Old: 15,067 2,395
New: 29,813 2,713
David Couzens
· 1 year ago
Hi All,
Ive rolled out OpenDNS to a lot of my customers but today I had a very strange message that appeared stating no webpages I surfed to can be found.
the bottom message was a squid error but i dont run squid
Do opendns run squid?
Zack C
· 1 year ago
I have Road Runner High speed. I have been getting dns problems all the time and its been annoying. We could not go to any site until we reset the router. Then i started using OpenDNS. So far its been noticibly faster but when it comes time for peak hours like mid-afternoon 3-7, it seems much slower. Also i use firefox and i loved typing ymail or flickr and having the google association find the site, and forward me to it. without loading the google search page. Open DNS sort of overrides that and the only thing you could do is blacklis guide.opendns.com When you do that it will just give you a blank page! so i pretty much lose that feature for good if i use open DNS. I am thinking of switching to another public dns server.
Zack C
· 1 year ago
Never mind...I realized that openDNS doesnt like torrents. i closed my torrent program and everything is up to speed.
All Comments
What do you mean by faster? I can’t help but wonder if it is a pseubo effect. DNS lookup is measured in the milliseconds for most internet configurations I have experienced. If a particular host has a lousy DNS configuration that is something else.
Use Firefox or Flock typing in the address bar, and the implicit Google’s “I’m feeling lucky†will get you good results often with less typing than OpenDNS's tyop correct. The phishing feature is novel but also coming in Firefox 2.0 .
According to their website, they plans for expansion beyond the US. Where are you seeing that it is a US only solution?
I wouldn't look at this as Firefox/Flock competition, but another service to use in addition to those resources.
As for caching, Windows has a DNS cache process that is turned on by default, so commonly used URLs first check the local machine's DNS cache before going outside to the DNS server anyway. In short, I have had little problem with DNS, even when Comcast was having its problems.
This guy's idea may be good, but I really don't like using a DNS server I don't trust. This is where malware comes into play. I remove DNS hijackers from customer computers every day, so I'm not so keen on somebody's private DNS server, especially if they plan to serve ads.
It has made a very marginal difference probably around .002 Meg down improvement but hey everything helps.
thanks
-david
Clearly low on caffeine. :-)
-david
I'm with one of the bigger 2nd-tier (and VERY geek-friendly) ISPs here who generally get it all right - Internode (www.internode.on.net). I've never had issues with their DNS, but I think OpenDNS may be somewhat quicker, even from here.
David, how about putting a server in Australia?
Interesting. Response time relative to what? what do you enjoy about it?
I did give it a try. I did not find any difference, but I never found myself thinking "this DNS look up is slow". I am sure people's mileage will vary.
Today, it seems to be a US only solution.
I don't see it as competition to browsers at all, but I don't think it is currently a general or practical solution.
Though I find it intriguing, the technical details don't really add up to me either. It is not my experience that most DNS servers are slow.
There's nothing about us that's US-only (except the language on our website). Networking on the net is a funny thing where network topology and global geography don't always intersect where you think they do.
For example, it's likely that folks in Australia would have better connectivity to us in Palo Alto or LA than they would in Tokyo. Might not make sense, but google for "Southern Cross Cables" and you'll start to figure it out.
Lots of areas in Africa are on Sat connections that backhaul into the US or Europe. We're in the last steps of bringing up our POP in London which will pretty much give us the European coverage we need. A future site at AMS-IX or similar would just add redundancy (see recent RIPE presentation at NANOG on route overlap between LINX and AMS-IX locations for K-Root).
About DNS being slow, well, of course, ymmv. Then again, when your DNS is down, you'll know. :-)
Thanks,
David
It is great if you are positioned to have a global service including local languages. Where your service would be consistently faster than a "local provider" would lead me to complain to the provider. I am sorry, DNS is not magic, and never been a perceived issue for me, particularly not a bottle neck.
I have experienced plenty of outages, but I guess I am lucky that it has never been isolated to DNS,
Lloyd
Graham
Nothing but BlueSky.
Trust? You "trust" Comcast? Man are you in for a suprise. They're screwed, blued and tattooed by the tier 1 SysAdmins they use, I've been looking for a way out for years.
We'll see how this pans out, so far so good.
Hylas
Thanks for letting us know. If you'd email me a traceroute to the IPs you're using that'd help me a lot.
I'm david [atatat] opendns [dotdotdot] com
Works great
Thanks.
Old:
15,067
2,395
New:
29,813
2,713
Ive rolled out OpenDNS to a lot of my customers but today I had a very strange message that appeared stating no webpages I surfed to can be found.
the bottom message was a squid error but i dont run squid
Do opendns run squid?
grrrrrrrrrrrrr