Speed up web page loads with OpenDNS

orware · Cholo Nako Joined: 26 Jun 2007 Posts: 38 Votes: 1

I've been using this since last October or so when I saw it in an article online.

Can't really do any benchmarks to tell you exactly how much better page loads are, especially now that I've been using it for so long, but I seemed to notice a perceptible decrease in waiting for a page to load when I began using it. Even though I don't really use myspace, I knew quite a few people that did and the article mentioned that one of the main things OpenDNS could do was help myspace load a little faster.

Note that this isn't a magic bullet or anything. It won't make your downloads go any faster or anything like that, it just helps your computer get results back quicker about which IP address is attached to the domain name (web site) you are trying to view.

More info:

http://www.opendns.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDNS

-Omar

orware · Cholo Nako Joined: 26 Jun 2007 Posts: 38 Votes: 1

When I first started using OpenDNS, their subsidiary site, PhishTank, was just getting off the ground and didn't really have all that much content. I didn't really keep up with new stuff that might be going on with the site until right after making my post right now when I went to visit the site.

They have a really cool feature, now they have an adult content blocker that you can enable for free...the only problem is that it would only really make sense if you had a static dedicated IP address (so this would work great for an organization such as ICOE, but not necessarily for someone with a normal broadband connection since your IP changes pretty regularly).

All you'd have to do is setup an account and add the IP addresses that pertain to your network and then enable the content filtering.

http://blog.opendns.com/2007/06/28/i-just-saved-a-bunch-of-money-on-my-dns-service-by-switching-to-opendns/
http://www.opendns.com/start/features/adult/

-Omar[/url]

Hobbit · Posted: 05 Jul 2007 02:59 PM Post subject:

What's the science behind all this?

orware · Cholo Nako Joined: 26 Jun 2007 Posts: 38 Votes: 1

If you haven't checked out the links yet, especially the first ones (like the Wikipedia one hint hint) I'd suggest you do that first.

If you have some specific questions after that I can try helping you answer them no problem.

Hobbit · Posted: 05 Jul 2007 10:17 PM Post subject:

It actually improved my speed quite a bit. This is earlier today.

And now.

I liked how it redirected craisglist.og to the correct domain. Thanks for this. =D

Hobbit · Posted: 09 Jul 2007 04:25 PM Post subject:

I stopped using this once I saw their evil business model, and when I couldn't access some sites (they weren't down in case you're wondering).

orware · Cholo Nako Joined: 26 Jun 2007 Posts: 38 Votes: 1

Are you referring to the results page you get when you type in a website incorrectly as OpenDNS' Evil Business Model?

If so, you have to understand there is really no other way for them to make money and they are doing this crap for free. I don't see this as evil at all since it's the most honest and least interfering model I've come across. I actually like the results page because usually it helps me when a dumb site doesn't accept connections when I type in domain.com because the results page will have the link I need pointing to www.domain.com which I can just click on and go directly to the site. That happens quite a bit.

If you could list those sites you tried out maybe I could try and see why they didn't work for you the other day to clear up your misconceptions.

As for the bandwidth test pictures you posted that is probably more related to the fact that you tried the test at two different times during the day (with broadband you don't have a fixed download/upload speed, it varies, even if you have DSL).