OpenDNS offers speed, security

I started playing around with Open DNS today.  DNS stands for domain name system, and the mechanisms that drive it are one of the ancient pieces of the internet, going all the way back to the early 1980s.  

On a simple level, DNS will turn a domain name into an IP address. For example, you type in google.com and the DNS server figures out that it is 74.125.45.100, and you get to the site.  The problem is that some ISP's, like mine (Cox), have somewhat crappy DNS servers.  This can lead to longer page loads.  Also, DNS servers can be compromised and by default they allow users to transition to sites that are "bad", for example, phishing sites.

What Open DNS does is apply the Wikipedia approach to trusted sites.  Users (and there are many of them) will designate a site as a phishing site or a porn site.  Other users confirm this and vote.  With enough votes, the site is tagged with that label.  

Now comes the fun part.  You do some very easy modifications to your computer or router and you are now using the Open DNS servers instead of your ISP's.  You can choose to block entire categories of sites or specific.  The way they make money is if you type a wrong address, you are transitioned to one of their ad pages, which looks like Google.  Pretty innocuous, if you ask me.

If you want to try it out, go ahead and point your DNS servers to 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220.  

I will post an update on this very useful service once I've had the time to play around with it a bit more.