I’m inspired by Simon Phipp’s post “Freedom to Leave” [via Tim Bray]. Simon’s talking about the openness of technology formats and standards, and reminds us all:
The fastest way to send early adopters packing is to make your cool new toy a roach motel.
Though we’re not about data formats, OpenDNS is against lock-in, too. We are asking you to choose OpenDNS, for various benefits. We’re confident that you’ll be happy with our DNS service. If you don’t agree, you’ll make another choice…and there’s nothing we could or would do to stop you.
DNS is easy to change (see for yourself), it’s under your control, and you have a choice.
P.S. I’ve felt this way before, though Simon (and others, like John Hagel) are more convincing.
Mr Skeptical
Your OpenDNS service might be great but a free (or ad-supported) service doesn’t mean there’s freedom.
How transparent or open is your DNS cache database? Is there a web interface to the database? Is there a publicly accessible log/report of each alleged phishing attempt? Is there a public log of specific DNS changes/updates? Is there a public log of differences between your system and regular DNS? You basically override regular DNS for some sites, e.g. any that are experiencing a phising attempt? How likely are false positives?
To a certain extent it seems like everyone should have this technology directly on their own computer, DNS is (still) too centralized.
-Mr Skeptical
posted on July 10th, 2006 at 6:48 am
T. Longren
OpenDNS: Better DNS…
Wired is running an interesting story on OpenDNS. What is OpenDNS you ask? “OpenDNS makes the Internet experience safer, faster and smarter for you and everyone using your network.” Here’s a peice from the article:
The OpenDNS syst…
posted on July 10th, 2006 at 7:33 am
Magnus
This is really good in theory. I’m a big fan of everydns and hope you can make something of OpenDNS.
Right now I am finding performance lacking. My local ISP DNS lookups are coming back much faster than OpenDNS (often less than 1ms for local ISP, usually in excess of 100ms for OpenDNS).
I’m almost wondering if the only way for this to work is for OpenDNS to make arrangements with the big ISP’s to collocate servers in their datacenters. Peering isn’t enough; you’ll be adding extra hops and still have the whole pesky speed of light issue to overcome.
posted on July 10th, 2006 at 8:05 am
David Ulevitch
Mr Skeptical,
I know what you’re saying and we’re definitely working on making it more transparent. I think you’ll see only more and more transparency coming out of us. What we want is to take the black box that is the current state of recursive DNS and make it open not just for you to see us, but to manage your own DNS.
-david
posted on July 10th, 2006 at 8:20 am
Brian
Well for dial-up here, it’s far faster as my DNS requests are right next-door (Palo Alto) rather than cross-country for CompuServe Classic (Va.). This one goes into my networking black-book, especially for novice setups.
posted on July 10th, 2006 at 10:03 am
OpenDNS Blog » ISPs who limit DNS changes…let’s talk
[…] We are trying to confirm these reports with the companies so our information is accurate and up-to-date. Inquiries via their websites and support lines have gotten no response, so I am making a more public request, both to the companies themselves and to their customers. I’d rather tell potential OpenDNS customers to avoid frustration than try and help them to no avail after they’ve wasted time trying to choose their own DNS. […]
posted on April 4th, 2007 at 5:29 pm