We’ve talked about OpenDNS quite a bit over the years, noting that these guys know what geeks like: free, fast DNS lookups that smooth out the Internet’s rough edges and shave seconds off of many web tasks. Now OpenDNS is offering DNSCrypt, a service that completely encrypts your DNS sessions, ensuring that evil ha><0rZ can't see where you're headed on the web. The service also prevents man-in-the-middle DNS attacks. The service also automatically enables OpenDNS on your machine, thereby killing multiple birds with one multi-megabyte OS extension.
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Everyone’s favorite alternative DNS service, OpenDNS, is now serving up DNS to 30 million customers world-wide. The company announced this milestone in a short release and notes that they are now sending out more DNS goodness than any other major ISP.
The company says they are now used in one of three US schools, hundreds of thousands of households, and a plethora of major corporations including Nike, Staples, BP, and Burger King. → Read More
Today’s kids have grown up in a world where the internet has always been around, Google has always been there to help, and having a smartphone is the norm. It only follows that they’d be super comfortable with the web, using it just as proficiently, if not more so, than their parents. That’s all well and good, but there’s this one pretty huge problem: the internet is dangerous.
That’s why D-Link and OpenDNS have partnered to put OpenDNS on all new models of consumer model D-Link routers. If you haven’t heard, OpenDNS provices security services for families who want to keep their kids off of nasty sites, and now the system will be built right in to D-Link routers. Customizing security settings is all taken care of during the initial router set up, and parents have the option to choose more overarching settings, or get specific by blocking individual sites. → Read More
According to an SEC filing, DNS service provider OpenDNS has raised more capital, $4.5 million to be specific. We’ve confirmed the additional financing with the company and learned that this was an inside round handled by Sequoia Capital and Greylock Partners (they took a stake in the company in July 2009).
Chief executive David Ulevitch (see this SFGate profile for more about the man) tells me there wasn’t really a need for more venture capital – the business has been running profitably for a while now – but that OpenDNS had the chance to be “opportunistic”. → Read More
The World Economic Forum has announced its list of 31 Technology Pioneers for 2011. The Technology Pioneers are its list of up-and-coming startups. Last year’s list included Twitter, Playfish, and Boston Power. The year before, Mint, Etsy, and Brightcove were named.
Joining the pantheon this year are foursquare, Knewton, Layar, Scribd, and Spotify. However, greentech is equally strong on the list, particularly with smartgrid companies such as OPower and Tendril. Below is the full list of infotech companies that made it, with links to their Crunchbase profiles for more information: → Read More
I personally love OpenDNS, at least as much as you can love a DNS service. It offers a number of admin features that are usually reserved for bigger and badder ISPs and the service is free, fast, and fun (not really, but I liked the alliteration). If you’ve never used it, it essentially replaces your current ISPs Domain Name Server which is like the Internet’s phone book. To use it, all you have to do is type in two sets of numbers into your network preferences. If you want to get really fancy, you can create an account to control access to certain sites, add shortcuts to sites (typing “cgmail” will get me to CrunchGear mail, for example, in my setup), and stats. It also warns you about malware attacks. → Read More
System Administrator Appreciation Day is July 30. OpenDNS wants to make sure that you sysadmins get the recognition you deserve. That’s why they ran the SysAdmin of the Year contest. And now they want to remind your boss to say “thank you” to you on your special day. → Read More
I’m on paternity leave for a bit, so I’m not doing any of my normal sysadmin stuff. But there are countless sysadmins still out there working hard to make sure that your systems and networks just work. The curse of the sysadmin is that the better you do your job, the less anyone really knows what it is you do. July is System Administrator Appreciation Month, which is a marked improvement over the single System Administrator Appreciation Day that we used to celebrate! To make sure the unsung heroes of the data center get their fifteen minutes of fame OpenDNS is running a contest to find the System Administrator of the Year! → Read More
When you think of one percent of something, it’s usually not a very big number. But in some cases it is. Like when you’re talking about all of the users of the Internet in the world.
Today, OpenDNS is announcing that over one percent of the world’s Internet users are using its services. It’s the first DNS provider to hit such a milestone, and it means that over 18 million people are using the service to access the web in a way that founder and CEO David Ulevitch calls “safer, faster, smarter and more reliable.” → Read More
When Google launched its own DNS service last month, one of the main stated goals behind the project was speed. The problem is that most Internet users have no idea what a DNS server is, let alone how to configure one, or test how fast it is. But one Googler has taken it upon himself to create an easy tool for testing DNS and recommending what you use with his 20% time.
Thomas Stromberg, a Google engineer based in Belgium, created Namebench, a piece of software to find the fastest DNS server available for you to use. The program is available for OS X, Windows, and Linux, and the entire thing has been open sourced by Stromberg. → Read More
Google just announced Google Public DNS, a new service that lets consumers use Google as their DNS service provider. The benefits to users are a theoretically faster and more stable browsing experience, and some additional security against malware type sites. The benefit to Google – tons more data, and some potential revenue.
Here are the basic instructions on how to use it (and Google has even provided phone support).
The service competes directly with Sequoia and Greylock backed OpenDNS, a four year old service that has had tremendous usage and revenue growth. OpenDNS is resolving 20 billion DNS queries per day, and has 15 million end users. Here’s an overview of how OpenDNS works. → Read More
I’m guessing that a lot of households utilize filters on computers to, well, keep the kiddies away from, you know, the Internet sites you look at. Netgear and OpenDNS aim to take that task away from the individual computer and start filtering at the router. That way, every device connected to the Internet through that router – including iPod touches, game consoles, and every computer – will be subject to filtering. → Read More
Hosting provider SoftLayer was partially taken down this morning from a DDOS attack, and several well known websites, including TechMeme and TwitPic, went down with it.
The problem at SoftLayer was resolved, but some users of OpenDNS, a DNS service provider that is becoming more and more popular, still can’t reach those websites. The reason? OpenDNS caches IP addresses for domain names on a user’s computer, and they’ve cached a bunch of bad DNS entries now on these computers. This speeds up web surfing considerably, and has helped some users avoid major outages at the ISP level in the past. But in cases like today, with outages at the hosting level, the bad IP information ends up being cached for up to a day.
Users who know what’s going on can reboot their computers to clear the cache, but that’s clearly not a good overall solution. OpenDNS says they are turning on a feature called SmartCache that caches both the current and “last good” IP address, so situations like today won’t be an issue any longer. → Read More
OpenDNS, a San Francisco based startup founded by Minor Ventures and David Ulevitch, first launched in mid-2006 as a free tool to speed up web surfing and protect users from phishing and other malware sites. OpenDNS isn’t exactly a sexy service. Users have to do some basic configuration of their computer to get it going, and once it’s running they rarely see it again. Here’s when you do see it – when you type in or click a link to a “bad” site, OpenDNS redirects you to their own page instead, which includes search results and contextual ads. The site has become a hit with schools and businesses that want to filter out any of 50 categories of websites (things like gambling, porn, social networking, etc.). Users can also whitelist or blacklist individual sites. The service now has 500,000 registered accounts. But the real number of users is far more than that. You don’t have to register to use the service. And a single registered account can represent tens of thousands of actual users. Ulevitch says one school account has 36,000 users, for example. Another account, a hospital, has 5,000 beds and wifi for patients. The service resolves about 7 billion DNS queries per day and serves about 2 million search pages per day. Revenue from search pages brings in as much as $20,000 per day. They currently work exclusively with Yahoo, Ulevitch says. All that ad revenue lets OpenDNS offer its core service for free. That means organizations can add spam filtering to their networks without paying up to tens of thousands of dollars for competing filtering solutions. OpenDNS also uses their community to drive new features and tag new malware sites. Users submit ideas and vote on them in a Digg-like interface. And when a user blacklists a site and tags it with a category, other users are asked to verify. If they do, the site is added to the general category blacklist as well. CrunchBase Information OpenDNS Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
For whatever nerdy reason I switched over to OpenDNS about a month ago. Actually, no. The reason was because I was tired of seeing that stupid Time Warner Road Runner every time I mistyped a URL or whatever. Well now OpenDNS refuses to load several pages, including CrunchGear and Facebook. What gives? I go to the main site and it says everything is up and running, yet I try to visit the offending Web site and I still get that same error message up there. Everyone I talk to online says the site is loading just fine for them. You all should know by now that I get annoyed very easily, so this latest issue is just another test of my patience. → Read More
I’m not sure what the bad guys want with a bunch of Facebook user account credentials, but phishing scams seem to be hitting the site. Scott Fish notes that some users are seeing Wall posts that contain links to phishing sites to gather Facebook credentials. An example message is: lol i cant believe these pics got posted….its going to be BADDDD when her boyfriend sees these- http://www.facebook.com.profile.php.id.371233.cn Note that the URL in the quote above, which leads to what looks like a Facebook sign in page, is not Facebook. So if you visit the site (don’t), DO NOT enter your Facebook credentials or any other personal information. Only your friends can add Wall posts on Facebook, so any posts linking to phishing sites are either from hacked accounts or else people have added the phishing guys as a friend. This is a good candidate for PhishTank, an anti-phishing service created by OpenDNS. → Read More
Would you buy DNS from this man? Well, you don’t have to. We love us some OpenDNS. It’s useful — the new “short-cut” feature and pR0n blocking are great to keep us undistracted and working — its CEO, David Ulevitch, was a really cool guy. Plus the kid is only 25. Well, John “The Animal” Markoff wrote all about him and his company. It’s a fairly in-depth look at a fairly boring topic that adds enough flair and personality to make it a good read. The service also offers on-the-fly URL repair using search results based on broken URLs type in by users. When VeriSign tried to do this, the world was outraged. When a nice anthro major does it, he gets good press. Fixing Typos by Web Users, Without Raising Hackles [NYTimes] → Read More
Fans of OpenDNS — everyone at CG uses it, I know that much — will now be able to block pornographic sites with the click of a button. The service uses St. Bernard’s iGuard, a service that apparently scours the web for PR()N so you don’t have to. While this might rankle some folks at work, it could be a great way to make sure junior stops with the underpants party at inopportune times or a quick and easy fix for libraries and schools who essentially have to take a zero-tolerance approach to all this. Me? I’m leaving everything on. Website → Read More
I’ve been a Bellsouth DSL subscriber for about 10 years now. It has at times been a tumultuous relationship. In the beginning I gamed quite a bit and there were issues, but after a year of complaining everything balanced out. It’s been great since then. Over the years I’ve upgraded consistently to the highest package available. I currently subscribe to the DSL Xtreme 6.0 package. Aside from a brief outage here and there, it’s been a trouble free experience — until about three weeks ago. → Read More
DNS is boring. Seriously. I’m yawning as I type this. However, OpenDNS is adding some very unusual features to their already speedy nameserver service. OpenDNS is a separate DNS nameserver system that offers a few interesting things. First, it speeds up your browsing time, subtracting a few seconds with each query. Second, it offers “search completion.” Whenever you mis-type a URL, instead of going to an error page, it offers a few possible sites. Fair enough. That’s useful. → Read More
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