For those of you that are more technically minded amongst our readers you will already know what DNS is – for those of you that don’t it is what is known as a “Domain Naming Service”.

Effectively what this does is allow humans to type in www.john-willis.com for example into their web browsers. The computer cannot understand where to get this from as computers work best with numbers, this is where the DNS servers come into play. They convert the human readable name to a number which without the service would be impossible for humans to remember (for example 92.35.234.18)

Want to know more about how changing the service you use could speed up the internet, as well as keeping your network safe – then read on!Now whichout you knowing you are probably already using 2 seperate DNS services.

1. Your home network (our router)

2. Your ISP’s DNS servers

Now you have two options when changing your DNS service – just one computer or on your router (and thus changing the entire network). I recommend you try just one machine to start with – test it, ensure you iron out any problems then push it onto your router.

So right now your probably thinking – why change? I’m happy with what I’ve got… allow me to explain. 

There are several reasons why I would consider changing my DNS service in my home network:

1. It allows content filtering to be done with ANY software on your machines
2. It allows you to have custom pages that users will see when they hit blocked content
3. It has statistics logging available to allow you to monitor your networks internet usage
4. It allows you to create handy shortcuts to all your frequently used pages

So next we will look at each advantage one by one – hopefully this will make it clear that as this service is free it’s a win win situation!

Reason 1: Content Filtering

Anyone with children will know how important it is to keep their access restricted and safe. There are certain types of site that you don’t want them to access. OpenDNS provides you with these features to block site sections such as Adult Themes, Nudity, or even Webmail. It is simple to set up as well as almost instant protection. You can disable an entire section – but better still you can “Whitelist” (enable forever) certain sites that may be blocked within that section.For example – you may block all access to nudity for your household but you know that a site – for example “someartsite.net” needs to be available for your 12 year old daughter to complete her art work – but it has been blocked because of nudity on it – with a whitelist you could enable access to just that site – job done!

Reason 2: Custom Block Pages

One of the main advantages of OpenDNS over similar products is the customisation it offers even free customers. As you can see from the above screenshot – I can customise the text users will see when they hit: A blocked site A phishing site This is better as it allows you to write a message – allowing your users to know that they need to see you to unblock that site. The other options for customisation include a custom logo (which you upload through their website – http://www.opendns.com) – as well as a custom search page (similar to Google)

Reason 3: Statistics

Statistics are cool – they allow us to monitor our family internet usage – track our most visited websites and also look at the time of day or night we access the internet.As you can see from the screen shot above it allows us to view all these as user friendly graphs – these are turned off by default so make sure you turn them on if your interested!

 Reason 4: Creating your own internet shortcuts

This is one of the best features of OpenDNS I use on a daily basis. This feature allows users (with no need for technical knowledge) to set up shortcuts to their most frequently visited websites.Simply by typing a single word into the address bar in your browser and hitting enter it will redirect you to the shortcut you have set up… example might include: “maps” –> http://maps.google.com “news” –> http://news.bbc.co.uk “blog” –> http://john-willis.com “appleshop” –> http://store.apple.com/uk These will save you time and effort whilst surfing the net! – you won’t believe you survived without them once you get used to it!

Conclusion:

So as you can see, the service offered by OpenDNS is a good one! It’s free, control rich and offers a reliable DNS service all over the world.

If you decide you want to use the service then you will need to point your router/computers DNS service to the following servers:

Server 1: 208.67.220.220

Server 2: 208.67.222.222

Then either reboot or flush your dns using the following:

ipconfig /flushdns

This will work from the command prompt in Windows – reboots are also an option in any Operating system.

Have fun and post your findings if your impressed!

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