OpenDNS is Cool

I was listening to my favorite podcast today, This Week in Tech with Leo Laporte, Patrick Norton, John C. Dvorak and others (pretty much the old TechTV gang when it was an awesome cable channel, before they were bought by G4 and subsequently run into the ground). But I digress... anyway, they were discussing an awesome service called OpenDNS, so of course I decided to check it out when I got back from lunch. Sure enough, this is a very cool, completely free DNS (domain name service). For those of you who don't know, DNS is what converts Internet name addresses (i.e. www.google.com) to it's actual IP Address (i.e. 208.67.219.230). DNS was created in the early days of the Internet because humans can remember names a lot easier than number combinations. Typically, when you type an address into a web browser, for example, it goes and runs to your Internet Service Provider's DNS server to say "where the heck is google.com?" to which your ISP's DNS server replies "why it's 208.67.219.230 of course." Anyway OpenDNS allows you to use their free DNS server instead of your ISP's DNS server, and even customize it's responses with messages and a logo, add shortcuts, and block phishing or other bad web sites. You can tell your router to use that DNS for your network, or on your particular compuer if you don't administer your own network. Very cool stuff. I love open architecture and free services. Technology is definitely fun. :-)

Comments

David Ulevitch said…
Hey David -- Do you know which episode it was? I just listened to the latest one (from Oct 8th) and didn't catch a mention of OpenDNS (my company).

Thanks for the great write-up, btw. :-)
October 12, 2007 at 7:38 PM
David Bottomley said…
Good question... I believe it was episode 110 or 111. I've been catching up on my TWIT episodes, so I'm not sure. :) You're welcome- keep up the awesome work!
October 15, 2007 at 4:16 PM
SlickShell said…
This was actually on a TWIT Security Now episode #112. They talk about it somewhere around 50 minutes into the program.
October 16, 2007 at 3:07 PM
Unknown said…
But it was also on TWIT itself, not just security now.
October 16, 2007 at 3:52 PM
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