We have a few confirmed reports of ISPs which do not allow their customers to use external DNS services, such as OpenDNS. These reports are from customers, not the companies. You can change your settings all you like on your end (computer, router, etc.), but they will be ignored/overridden.
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.
NTL customers have been the most persistent in their attempts, to no avail. If you work for NTL (very large ISP in the UK), please get in touch.
If you work for a satellite broadband ISP, such as HughesNet (previously known as DirecWay), StarBand, or SkyWay USA, I’d love to hear from you. Satellite providers: if I didn’t mention your name, I’m still curious and interested…just haven’t heard from your customers yet. I know there are some peculiarities regarding latency for satellite access which probably are the reasons for the policy. Would love to brainstorm about technical solutions all the same.
If you are a customer of any of these companies, and you have better information, I’m listening.
My goal? Provide accurate information and instructions to potential OpenDNS customers on the Get Started page. As our FAQ notes, OpenDNS does not host websites, register domains, or act as an ISP.
How to contact us
Use the contact form or call us at +1-415-344-3166.
RaPido
Fine , but i wanna report cable.net.co dont letus change dns
thank , good job = good luck
RaPido
posted on August 4th, 2006 at 10:05 pm
Russell Curtis
I’m a customer of Blueyonder in the UK, who have just merged with NTL to form the UK’s largest ISP. I’ve just configured my router to use OpenDNS, and my initial findings are that it seems to work OK…I’ve always found Blueyonder to be a really helpful ISP, and you may find that the policy which governs the usage of the Blueyonder service may be extended to NTL users in the not too distant future.
posted on August 5th, 2006 at 2:45 am
Hamish Morgan
I am an NTL customer/victim, and am experiencing this same problem. BTW although they have merged with Blueyonder they are still running 2 largely separate infrastructures (For example in my area I could sign up to NTL but not Blueyonder!) so I’m not holding my breath for any great changes.
Anyway, NTL are probably blocking this service by transparently intercepting all traffic to port 53 (rather like how some ISPs do with port 25 for smtp) so a workaround for this issue may be to run the name-server on an alternate port. Though configuring various OS to use a different DNS port is going to be tricky. I use Linux and resolve.conf does not support alternate ports (though apparently the BSD/OSX resolver does, so it should be patchable.) I’ve no idea about Windows, but I still think a solution for some people is better than non at all.
posted on August 5th, 2006 at 9:26 am
John Roberts
Russell, thanks. Another Blueyonder customer (also using OpenDNS) mentioned the merger, too. Still too early for integration, clearly, so don’t know which policies will live on.
Hamish, that idea might be workable, but we’d prefer to work with ISPs than work around them. Port blocking games don’t have any winners.
posted on August 7th, 2006 at 8:50 am
matthew
NTL Customer…
Switching DNS used to be a common tactic, when NTL’s servers were troublesome, but the web caches can also cause issues, since they are tied to NTL’s servers. Port trapping on 53 is not something I’d heard of them doing before.
posted on August 8th, 2006 at 10:03 am
Liam McDaid
im an NTL customer. i have found them to be far better than bt (dont get me started) because it was the only thing that actually worked. in the start the only problem i was having was with sending email. smtp port 110 i eventually learned i had to use the ntl outgoing server to send emails or use webmail.
i was told about opendns by a friend how said it was it was a much better service so i decide to move to it. i have everything setup the dnsservers where showing up as on opendns but nuffing.
what i am trying to say is mabye ntl will relax a bit like they did with smtp. i would like to know if other people had the same problems.
posted on August 22nd, 2006 at 3:38 pm
Chris M
I’m an NTL customer too, and I tried setting up OpenDNS yesterday, on my Windows XP PC, my Solaris x64 laptop, and on the router (so in other words testing via DHCP from the router, and manually configured interfaces on the PCs) - no luck.
I’ll be giving NTL a call to see if I can find someone with a clue, who can give me an answer on this!
posted on September 19th, 2006 at 1:54 am
John Roberts
I’ve recently gotten confirmation from an NTL employee that NTL doesn’t block any ports. Now we still need to help NTL customers who want to use OpenDNS figure out why we’ve had problems. There are almost a score of NTL folks who have failed to successfully change. I’m open to any ideas!
posted on September 21st, 2006 at 9:59 am
Tim P
Hello, another ntl 4mb customer in Watford (just north of London..) tried setting up OpenDNS this evening on my XPSP2 + Linksys router rig and the same result as the other ntl customers, it just don’t want to play.
Hope a way is found to use OpenDNS on the ntl network, as I’m hearing good things about the service..!
posted on October 10th, 2006 at 12:16 pm
Dazzle
I’ve had problems with NTL using a Belkin Wireless router switching to OpenDNS. I had changed the Belkin DNS to use the ORSN (http://european.nl.orsn.net/) DNS servers and just presumed they were working. When I switched to OpenDNS and tested it it wasn’t reacting how it was supposed to.
I’ve also had problems switching DNS on a PC using the TalkTalk service.
posted on October 19th, 2006 at 2:10 pm
Wei Ning
I am a NTL user in Central London, and I have had no problems using OpenDNS
posted on October 24th, 2006 at 6:51 am
Chris M
Hey! Good News! Just tried OpenDNS again, and it now works…
I’m the same Chris M who posted earlier (in September) - I’m an NTL customer, and previously I could not use OpenDNS.
I tried again today, and bingo, its all working.
So, I guess NTL must have fix something somewhere along the line (if it wasn’t port blocking).
Cool….
Chris.
posted on November 29th, 2006 at 2:01 am
Rohan
NTL have never used port blocking as far as I know. However they use transparent proxy caches which, as far as I’m aware, intercept any DNS requests.
http://cableforum.co.uk/board/showthread.php?t=50259
In some areas the proxy servers are “turned off” at the moment so that may be why OpenDNS is working… for now anyway.
posted on December 5th, 2006 at 11:15 am
Andrew
I am an NTL customer and i constantly have no end of problems with the service i started on a 1mb line and as i went up to 2mb then 4mb the service has got worse i have tried repatedly everthing i can think of to change my DNS servers over the past year to no avail so have dropped down to 2mb service and it makes no difference to service compaired with my friends 10mb service my advice if you want fast DNS dont get NTL . would love to find a solution !!! p.s. dont have a bt line so stuck with NTL boo hoo
posted on January 1st, 2007 at 10:06 am
Fraser
Just to chime in to this discussion. I like in Welwyn Garden City and I’m an NTL customer. I too cannot seem to use OpenDNS due to NTL’s proxies.
posted on January 2nd, 2007 at 7:37 am
Tim Grahl
We are a new customer to Hughesnet and we are experiencing the same problem. We were going to use the Hughesnet service as a redundant ISP in case our first provider went down. We are using a Fatpipe box that is doing the DNS but incoming traffic through the satellite is not routing to the correct port. If you send out the request for DNS on port 53, it returns to port 2000.
I have contacted Hughesnet multiple times and each time was told that we (customers) are not allow to use the static IPs in that manner and we absolutely cannot get it to work. It appears that we bought 5 static IP’s that we can’t even use.
Any help or answers would be greatly appreciated.
posted on April 6th, 2007 at 12:19 pm
John Roberts
Tim, we later posted this: http://blog.opendns.com/2006/10/18/hughesnet-satellite-broadband-customers-cannot-use-opendns-at-this-time/
Which isn’t good news, I’m sorry.
posted on April 6th, 2007 at 12:26 pm
OpenDNS Blog » HughesNet satellite broadband customers cannot use OpenDNS at this time
[…] I’ve publicly speculated before, I now have official confirmation from Hughes that HughesNet customers cannot use OpenDNS […]
posted on April 12th, 2007 at 12:50 pm
David Bradley
Ironically, I gave OpenDNS a mention on my site
http://www.sciencetext.com/switch-on-to-opendns-really-take-back-the-internet.html
having heard so many good things about it, but being an NTL customer in the UK, I cannot actually use it myself. D’oh! Come on NTL…actually now VirginMedia, please open our connections so we can use OpenDNS
db
posted on June 21st, 2007 at 12:05 am
David Bradley
I spoke to NTL press office just now and they put me in touch with a tech guy who states categorically that ntl/VirginMedia does not block openDNS nor any other 3rd party DNS servers. I will report back again once I have more information from them.
db
posted on June 26th, 2007 at 4:53 am
David Bradley
The tech guy at NTL/VirginMedia just called me.
“When our networks team were looking into this for us on the back of your
report they found a configuration problem on a router that your Internet
connection goes through,” he told me, “which would have been causing the problems you reported.”
They’ve now fixed the fault. He reiterated that the ISP does not block any 3rd party DNS services, but told me that if any other customers are having issues with OpenDNS they should get in touch with the support team who will be happy to investigate.
db
posted on June 27th, 2007 at 1:58 am
OpenDNS Blog » Virgin Media (formerly NTL) allows third-party DNS, including OpenDNS
[…] we heard from various NTL customers (Virgin Media was previously known as NTL) that OpenDNS was not an option for them to use, for unknown […]
posted on July 5th, 2007 at 4:14 pm
martyn
Hi iam also a NTL Customer or should I say virgin M anyway my wife who is a Student at Greenwich Uni doing Computer science has found out that although no Port Blocking is done Virgin Media do in fact blacklist the domestic account Ip addresses which will stop a customer from using smtp from say Outlook Express email client. answer around this is to use another email client such as Thunderbird which uses the email server directly and does not use port 25 from your pc Reason for Blacklisting of address is that you should have a business account, (I wonder if this would also cause DNS issues?)
Thanks for your Blog V Best
posted on July 12th, 2007 at 2:27 am
Michael Miller
You can Put Comcast home users on That list also
posted on August 7th, 2007 at 3:24 am
Keith
I have Starband Internet service and I couldn’t get OpenDNS to work through Linksys router. However, when I setup WinXP to use the OpenDNS, it appears to be working! I’m not for sure it’s working but it appears to show graphs and such in OpenDNS Dashboard.
posted on April 13th, 2008 at 6:22 pm