# Hack DNS for lightning-fast Web browsing (CAUTION)



## lotuseclat79 (Sep 12, 2003)

Article here.

-- Tom


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## Blackmirror (Dec 5, 2006)

I have tried it and there is an iimprovement in the speed .. thanks


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## JohnWill (Oct 19, 2002)

One modification I'd make to their recommendations, use your existing DNS address as the secondary. That way, if something goes south at the OpenDNS site, you still have your old standby.


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## Blackmirror (Dec 5, 2006)

lol which was before i changed it


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## JohnWill (Oct 19, 2002)

If you have a router, all you have to do is use the router's base address.


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## Blackmirror (Dec 5, 2006)

Ok John thanks . 

. panicked for a minute then


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## Chris708 (Apr 13, 2007)

Didn't notice that big of an increase. It's pretty good though.


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## JohnWill (Oct 19, 2002)

I've fooled around with all sorts of public IP addresses when Comcast was having DNS issues in the past. So far, other than a tree falling on the fiber up the street, Verizon FiOS has been flawless, and I haven't needed to tinker around.


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## ferrija1 (Apr 11, 2006)

Verizon's DNS is one of the best, I tried OpenDNS once and it seemed almost like it was a little slower, so I switched back.


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## horsecharles (Jul 24, 2005)

Thanks, lotuseclat79...i use their competitor Treewalk: http://ntcanuck.com/downloads.htm


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## jaross18 (Jun 4, 2007)

Already using OpenDNS. Works Great.


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## CTPhil (Jan 5, 2006)

Going with OpenDNS seemed to speed things up for me, thanks for the tip!


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## Vanqu1sh (Jun 6, 2007)

*I* am sad...this didnt work for me! I put in the DNS for primary and secondary, restarted and nothing  is it possibly because I am on dial up?


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## JohnWill (Oct 19, 2002)

Could be, hard to know. Unless you're having issues, I'd stick to your ISP supplied DNS servers.


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## lotuseclat79 (Sep 12, 2003)

Hi Vanqu1sh,

Every time you connect with dialup, the DNS servers are refreshed by the ISP if you are using DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol) which reassigns you another IP address, and resets your DNS servers.

-- Tom


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## The_Oracle (May 20, 2007)

works fine for single PCs on my network, tnx! my linksys router, however, doesn't like it.

yet another issue, firefox' "i'm feeling lucky" feature doesn't work anymore, typing the keyword(s) into the address bar will divert to the 'openDNS guide', powered by yahoo! ... well, i suppose i can live with that 

update: this article explains the 'redirecting' and more ... quite interesting!


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## neos1 (Feb 13, 2006)

lotuseclat79 said:


> Article here.
> 
> -- Tom


It's faster than the DNS service that my ISP uses, by at least twice.


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## JohnWill (Oct 19, 2002)

I'm going to add a small caution on using OpenDNS here!​
I had OpenDNS configured on this machine, and I hadn't noticed any ill effects, so I just never got around to changing it back to my default. That all changed today!

I have a machine named BOBBI on my network, so I tried to connect to it with UltraVNC, and I couldn't access it??? I found that curious, so I pinged it. Imagine my surprise when the PING came back with a 208.x.x.x address instead of the 192.168.x.x address that I expected! I quickly ran over to the machine, and it had the correct IP address, and I could indeed ping and connect using the IP address. I did a WHOIS on the IP address that BOBBI resolved to, and it pointed to OpenDNS.

I promptly went into my network properties and changed my DNS back pointing at the router's base address, and the world promptly righted itself and everything worked as it should.

Be careful out there!


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## hewee (Oct 26, 2001)

I changed my DNS to open DNS and it help page loads some.
But type in a address in the address bar and if it can not find it you get taken to there site.
Like I did www.comcast3.net and your go here.
http://guide.opendns.com/?url=www.comcast3.net

On a ping it I get this here and the IP is opendns
Pinging www.comcast3.net [208.67.219.130]

On a trace your get the same IP. 
I cut out most of this but it shows the start and the ending IP.

Target Name: www.comcast3.net
IP: 208.67.219.130

nxdomain.guide.opendns.com [208.67.219.130]

Ping statistics for www.comcast3.net
Packets: Sent = 10, Received = 10, Lost = 0 (0.0%)
Round Trip Times: Minimum = 19ms, Maximum = 21ms, Average = 19ms

So if you think you pinging a place you better be sure it is going there by checking the IP address.

Funny I found out comcast has another address at http://www.comcast1.net/ that is part of google but I can't get no where because I Blocked: pagead2.googlesyndication.com in my hosts file.


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## JohnWill (Oct 19, 2002)

There's no way a local network name should have resolved to an Internet location, so I have to chalk that one up to a bug in OpenDNS.


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## hewee (Oct 26, 2001)

With your ISP if a link was bad or deal your get one of these errors here.
http://guide.opendns.com/error_page_examples

But with DNS you get a page like this when it can not find what your looking for.
http://guide.opendns.com/

Why?
Because they can make money.

How does OpenDNS make money?


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## briealeida (Jun 3, 2007)

I like it. Not a significant impact. Definitely a case-by-case thing.


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