Everyone Should Use OpenDNS

Tagged as: Geek, Learn, Useful Sep 10

Have you heard of DNS? Well if you haven’t, in short it is what allows you to memorize “google.com” rather than “72.14.207.99″. Every time you enter a website address into a browser, the browser first has to retrieve the actual numerical address (called an IP address) that corresponds to it so that it can actually access the website.

A real-world analogy would be looking up a phone number in a telephone book. You likely don’t memorize everyone’s number. In fact, you probably don’t know all too many by heart. But you can easily remember someone’s name, right?

So each time you enter the address, your web browser has to ask a DNS server to give you the IP address. Very often, your ISP will have a DNS cache to more quickly give you the IP address.

Something everyone should consider using is OpenDNS. It is a couple of DNS servers that are able to specify on your own computer to always use instead of whatever it is that you would otherwise use. Why is it good? Well OpenDNS offers things like safety from malicious websites (e.g. a misspelled website that causes you to arrive at a malicious website) and speed (likely from optimized servers) to name a few. Try it out, and see if you can notice a difference. I have and I do!

There are instructions at the OpenDNS website for every operating system, and they take but a few minutes.