Geek zone - anybody using OpenDNS service?

[flymo]

Was looking at this lately, seemed pretty interesting.

I wasnt expecting the performance boost though in browsing experience purely by changing DNS servers to the OpenDNS servers!

Very snappy performance.

www.opendns.com

This is interesing...

But really how slow is typing in a site and the site being connected. Im pretty sure it cant make the connection you get from your ISP that much quicker since you have to go through your ISP's Routers before you get released onto the internet...

[flymo]

Just sends your DNS queries to another server other than the ones used by your ISP, in my case BT. It seems much much faster.

Originally Posted by flymo

Just sends your DNS queries to another server other than the ones used by your ISP, in my case BT. It seems much much faster.

I might try it just to see. Will let you know.

This has made me finally look into why my sky connection at home gives me poor pings. Apprently its because they have something called "interleaving" on and this makes connections more reliable but makes it so pings suffer. I rarely get pings in games below 100ms! Makes UT3 a pig to play.

Ive sent them a message asking for this Interleaving to be turned off. Fingers crossed the person who gets the message has a clue!

[timwilky]

I use opendns as I had problems with the virginmedia servers being out of date.

[flymo]

Originally Posted by ThEGr33k

This is interesing...

But really how slow is typing in a site and the site being connected. Im pretty sure it cant make the connection you get from your ISP that much quicker since you have to go through your ISP's Routers before you get released onto the internet...

It makes a big difference, the traffic to and from your machine will take the same route but its just the task of resolving names to IP addresses.

If you load something like BBCNews you might be surprised just how many name lookups occur to display the content. A few additional milliseconds here and there can add up when you have a page containing adds etc.

So, the connection will be no faster but the process to display the page takes less time. If you asked me 48 hours ago I would have said 'tosh', but I tried it and I'm pleasantly surprised by the results.

Originally Posted by flymo

It makes a big difference, the traffic to and from your machine will take the same route but its just the task of resolving names to IP addresses.

If you load something like BBCNews you might be surprised just how many name lookups occur to display the content. A few additional milliseconds here and there can add up when you have a page containing adds etc.

So, the connection will be no faster but the process to display the page takes less time. If you asked me 48 hours ago I would have said 'tosh', but I tried it and I'm pleasantly surprised by the results.

Aye I know what a DNS is Just didnt realise just one page would require many look ups but then thinking about it I should have known...

Originally Posted by ThEGr33k

This is interesing...

But really how slow is typing in a site and the site being connected. Im pretty sure it cant make the connection you get from your ISP that much quicker since you have to go through your ISP's Routers before you get released onto the internet...

A working router can deal with traffic a lot quicker than a broken (DNS) server..

Its also worth keeping in mind OpenDNS isn't so open, it is a company and they re-direct misspelled domains to their servers. (Although, I believe you can log in and turn this off for you IP). You can also turn on logging to see what DNS queries you perform along with some other tools too.

Dan

[flymo]

Originally Posted by ThEGr33k

Aye I know what a DNS is Just didnt realise just one page would require many look ups but then thinking about it I should have known...

Sorry, didnt mean to teach you how to suck eggs but there are varying levels of geekdom

[timwilky]

Originally Posted by ThEGr33k

Aye I know what a DNS is Just didnt realise just one page would require many look ups but then thinking about it I should have known...

Further to Sudoxe comment about a working router. My router caches DNS queries. so although there may be a large number of lookups, once one is done, further lookups for that DNS entry are resolved locally.