Messages

1

Living Room / Re: OpenDNS - safer, faster and smarter DNS

« on: February 08, 2008, 03:56 PM »

I love the fact that we can be having a discussion about almost anything and sometimes someone like David will chime in.   Welcome David, I hope you like the neighborhood.  I am a user of your service and have no complaints.  

-thomthowolf (February 08, 2008, 03:52 PM)

Thanks for the compliments. If I ever somehow miss something here you guys have questions on related to OpenDNS, you can email me first name at opendns dot com.

2

Living Room / Re: OpenDNS - safer, faster and smarter DNS

« on: February 01, 2008, 04:57 PM »

Looks very interesting. I occasionally have DNS problems with my ISP and can't access sites without changing my HOSTS file.

Does anyone know how the ads are served or where they appear? I'd just like to know that. (From here --- How Can OpenDNS be Free?.)

-Renegade (February 01, 2008, 04:22 PM)

You can see the full experience if you go to http://guide.opendns.com/ (or with an example: http://guide.opendns...l=www.ulevitch.commo )

You get that when you visit a domain name that no longer exists or is severely broken.  Rather than the browser "host can not be found" page.

-david

3

Living Room / Re: OpenDNS - safer, faster and smarter DNS

« on: February 01, 2008, 03:41 PM »

Customisable blacklists? 

Hmm, you mean I could make it as if all the World of Warcraft forums and information sites no longer exist?

 

-iphigenie (February 01, 2008, 03:38 PM)

Absolutely.  For everyone on your network. 

4

Living Room / Re: OpenDNS - safer, faster and smarter DNS

« on: February 01, 2008, 02:28 PM »

and it's used for certain kinds of traffic for people who choose to use opendns.

Could you please elaborate on this or link to a source that does, David?

-nosh (February 01, 2008, 02:17 PM)

http://blog.opendns....ogle-turns-the-page/

And since you're here, on a slightly different note - I believe you guys have options for people with accounts to block certain IPs marked unsafe. Is this blocking applied by default for people without accounts? Are certain IPs inaccessible while using OpenDNS that I may be able to access using my ISPs DNS? I'm asking this with regard to bittorrent activity and the effect OpenDNS may have on it. Thanks.

-nosh (February 01, 2008, 02:17 PM)

Just phishing is turned on by default.  Nothing else.  So that will let your bittorrent work flawlessly.  You can create an account and block all kinds of categories of sites and individual domains too.  We also let you fully whitelist sites as well, so even if it's a phishing site you can make an exception for it.  That's more common with certain adult sites than phishing sites, obviously. 

Our goal is to put the network administrator in control of their DNS.

Oh, just remembered, we also correct .cm to .com automatically.  You can create a (free) account and turn that off if you don't like it though.  Nobody does.  Real .cm domains continue to work just fine, only the ones which are wildcarded to a page full of ads get redirected.

5

Living Room / Re: OpenDNS - safer, faster and smarter DNS

« on: February 01, 2008, 01:56 PM »

Welcome to DC, david!!

We didn't do that for a reason.

-davidu (February 01, 2008, 12:40 PM)

I don't think i understand. You mean you give people a proxy address for google instead of google itself, but for no reason?

-jgpaiva (February 01, 2008, 01:16 PM)

Sorry -- Perhaps I wasn't clear.  I meant that we deliberately show the "google.navigation.opendns.com" domain name to make it transparent that we're doing the proxying.  We didn't have to do that (make it obvious what we were doing).  We could have instead just made it say www.google.com and very few people would have ever noticed. 

Not sure if I was any clearer here.  My brain needs more caffeine. :-)  Thanks for the kind welcome.

6

Living Room / Re: OpenDNS - safer, faster and smarter DNS

« on: February 01, 2008, 12:51 PM »

David: I assume you are associated with opendns?

-Josh (February 01, 2008, 12:48 PM)

Founder, CEO, occasional janitor. 

7

Living Room / Re: OpenDNS - safer, faster and smarter DNS

« on: February 01, 2008, 12:40 PM »

That's probably a good way to finance the service, jack URLS so they are linked to your affiliate deals.
Maybe it adds its affiliate code when you go to amazon and other places too, and frankly, why not - if you use them let them make money to cover the costs.

-iphigenie (February 01, 2008, 02:36 AM)

We don't ever do that.  And if we decided to do it, we'd say we do it and be open about it.  We've never been otherwise.

Just in case I'm not the last one to find this out, OpenDNS has been jacking all Google searches since the last several months.

-nosh

That's not true -- it's a proxy.  Much like a corporate proxy; and it's used for certain kinds of traffic for people who choose to use opendns.  It still goes to Google and we have close contacts with Google who are well aware of and okay with what we're doing.  We didn't do that for a reason.  But it does make it easier for folks to come up with wild conspiracy theories.  Although typically people just assume we are Google (we aren't).

Furthermore...

We put the CNAME referral to google.navigation.opendns.com to be EXPLICITLY clear about what we're doing.  We could have just as easily put no reverse DNS in place, no referral record, or even just made the reverse dns match www.google.com and most of you would be none-the-wiser.

Happy to discuss...

-david