ALTERNATIVE DOMAIN NAME SERVER IS SAFER, FASTER AND SMARTER

It's easy to write about a cool computer product when it relates to something with which you are familiar or something tangible. For example, writing about Best NetGuard, a keychain remote control that disconnects your kid's Internet connection when you press its button is easy for most readers to conceptualize. But writing about a better DNS can be somewhat challenging since it's more abstract. You may not know what a DNS is but every time you surf on over to a website by typing in its name, you are using a DNS to get there. DNS stands for Domain Name Server. Basically all a DNS does is convert the address name you typed into a series of numbers that is the actual numerical location of the website you wish to see. Those numbers are the website's IP (Internet Protocol) address.

All this came about because of two simple reasons. People remember names a lot better than they can remember a long string of numbers and computers can deal with numbers a lot better than they can deal with names. So when you type in a website's name, that name is sent to the DNS which in its simplest form is a database of website names and their corresponding IP addresses.  When the DNS finds a match to your name query, it passes along the corresponding IP address to be located and your browser displays the corresponding website. Please note that this is a highly simplified explanation of a complex process but for the purpose of this column, it's really all you have to know when I tell you that you don't have to use the DNS your Internet Service Provider (ISP) assigns to you.

Your ISP is the service you pay every month to get access to the Internet.  And while part of that service is providing you with a working DNS, you really don't have to use the DNS your ISP uses. You actually have a choice when it comes to selecting the DNS you wish to use. But why would you want to change the one you already have in the first place? Well as with most everything, some DNS services are better than others. So what makes a DNS better? Speed is one thing, safety is another and how often its database of names gets updated can certainly be important too. And anything else it can do to further help expedite your getting to the websites you want is gravy.  And that leads me into telling you about OpenDNS.

First and foremost, OpenDNS is a free service so that's one enticement right there. Now according to OpenDNS, it's faster because their DNS runs on a high-performance network that's geographically distributed within the U.S. and serviced by several redundant connections. So chances are that your requests will be serviced by a location near you without having to make as many "hops" from one location to another. That's somewhat nebulous so you may or may not be aware of any speed differences. But DNS access speed is just one part of many that makes your Internet connections work the way they do at any given moment. What is more quantifiable are the safer and smarter elements of OpenDNS.

In addition to keeping a very large and speedy database cache of IP addresses, OpenDNS also keeps track of their legitimacy. So if you attempt to surf on over to a malicious website such as one set up for a phishing attack, OpenDNS will warn you of the site's illegitimate nature and prevent you from going there. That's a really nice feature not normally found within a DNS.

The other cool feature is the ability of OpenDNS to spot typos in a website address and correct it for you automatically. So for example, if you were to type in "craigslist.og" OpenDNS would correct the error and take you directly to "craigslist.org" instead.

Changing where your computer goes when it needs a DNS lookup is easy to do.  Of course, be sure to first write down the DNS IP addresses you are replacing before you make the changes. Depending on what OS you use (Windows, Mac, Linux, etc.) simply replace the DNS IP addresses with the ones for OpenDNS which are 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220. There is no software to install and you can switch back at any time.

You may be asking how OpenDNS does this for free. Well if you type in a bad URL, instead of getting an error page, OpenDNS will display a web page with websites it thinks you may be trying to find which is certainly a lot better than just getting a 404 error or some bogus web page filled with useless ads. And on that OpenDNS page, you will also see some additional banner ads and advertising links. Some of those ads and sponsor links may somehow be related to your query so they may prove to be useful anyway.

Bottom line is that you have nothing to lose and everything to gain by giving OpenDNS a try. Check it out at www.opendns.com.

 

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