opendns.com
 

I saw a tech show today about this. You sign up to use an ip address from them rather than depending on Comcast (in my case). It's supposed to be faster. I tried it today and it does seem to be noticeably faster. Any downside?

No real downside. They make their money off referral and affiliate links, if you mistype Ebay or Amazon, they'll help spell it correctly for you, and make money off your purchase.

I've had it on my network and PDA for some time, and it really us quite handy. If you signup for an account you can also create shortcuts like "mail" that'll take you to your webmail account.

I used to use a pair of Level3 DNS addresses, but they got slower over the years as more people discovered them. So far OpenDNS has been great.

You want other DNS addresses?
Here are some:
Comcast 68.48.0.12
Millkern 198.6.1.125, 198.6.100.125
Mindspring 207.69.188.187
AT&T Global 165.87.13.129, 165.87.201.249
GoldenTree 206.13.29.12
galaxy hotel 202.96.209.5, 202.96.209.133
nomadix 194.2.0.20, 194.2.0.50
united.com 209.87.112.4, 209.87.113.4
verizon 4.2.2.4, 4.2.2.1
dns01.uls-prod.com 209.87.112.200
dns02.uls-prod.com 209.87.113.200

Why is it faster?

My ISP's DNS was in the toilet for awhile in 2006. After surveying the options, I switched to openDNS, which at the time was new, and I have used it ever since. (At the time, the creator must have been googling for references to his service. I was participating in a discussion of it on some bulletin board and the guy would chime right in, defending the service when skeptics posted, and helping people who were having problems understanding it or using it. I suspect he's too busy for that now.)

As ScottC pointed out, it takes you to a page of suggestions if you try to go to a non-existent site. It also has some anti-phishing features. The wikipedia article on openDNS has a brief overview with pros and cons.

One small annoyance: Rarely, no more than once every couple of months or so, it tells me that a site is not loading even when I know darn well it should. When that happens, I use the openDNS "CacheCheck" page, which will sometimes make the site accesible. If all else fails, I launch AOL (now free, BTW, for people with their own broadband access) which has its own DNS.

see "How we're faster: Global footprint" at http://www.opendns.com/how/faster/global-footprint/

One cavieat about openDNS...they do proxy some SSL requests.
I use OpenDNS but I do so knowing that I am trusting a 3rd party...doesnt always sit easy with me.
http://flickr.com/photos/nickdawson/1764878758/
(the comment under the picture is wrong, fyi)

They make their money by redirecting people's errors to advertising pages. I use comcast locally, and I didn't find their DNS servers to be any faster. I had issues with OpenDNS after they started redirecting all of www.google.com and run it through their proxy servers.

They have humongous caches.

Thanks everyone

To be clear, you're getting DNS resolution from them, not an IP address from them as implied in the original post.

[QUOTE=oldjack;9416259]One small annoyance: Rarely, no more than once every couple of months or so, it tells me that a site is not loading even when I know darn well it should. When that happens, I use the openDNS "CacheCheck" page, which will sometimes make the site accesible.

Thanks for this! I had the problem you describe, tried this, and it worked like a charm.

Ah. That makes sense. The OP completely confused me.