The ABC affiliate in Omaha, KETV Channel 7, aired a segment about OpenDNS today on the 5 o’clock news. Consumer Watch reporter Mike Sigmond did a great job explaining what it is that we do. Thanks, Mike.

Check out the full segment here.

The following release is not being distributed far and wide.

OpenDNS Thanks Its Users with Cranberry Choice for Thanksgiving

Canned or whole cranberries, intelligent DNS platform offers users choice about how they want their turk…err, DNS.

PLYMOUTH ROCK, Mass. – Nov. 22, 2006 – Just in time for the American holiday of Thanksgiving, OpenDNS offers additional choice in DNS: canned cranberry sauce or whole cranberry sauce or none at all.

All OpenDNS users enjoy a fast, free, reliable DNS service, with the safety of phishing prevention and the intelligence of typo correction. That service is available with or without an Account. With a free OpenDNS Account. users can choose their own DNS preferences. Those preferences now include cranberries: canned, whole, or none at all.

By default, OpenDNS will deliver DNS without cranberries. But with an account, OpenDNS users can change their cranberry preference and have that taste distributed around the global OpenDNS network instantly.

Canned versus Whole

It’s a debate that stretches back generations: which kind of cranberry sauce goes best with the traditional turkey dinner? The advocates of canned sauce praise the consistency, in texture, mouth feel, and shape, and welcome the common thread that weaves together Americans throughout the nation. The ridges left by the sturdy can mean Thanksgiving to many.

For others, nothing says Thanksgiving more than whole cranberries, in all their aromatic tartness, waiting to be dribbled over their turkey (and anything else!). The variations are cherished, and the “natural” state gently evokes the first Thanksgiving’s hardships (without actually requiring suffering).

Further background may be enjoyed at “The Great Cranberry Sauce Debate.”

Note: For those who stay on the side of this great divide, stay with the default: DNS without cranberries. It’s still free, fast, and reliable.

Next year’s preference? Indicate whether you like your DNS with dark meat, white meat or drumsticks.

P.S. Happy Thanksgiving. OpenDNS understands that the cranberry preference may be of limited value to those who do not celebrate Thanksgiving; we promise to consider other preferences appropriate to local holidays.

There’s no denying it. The holidays are officially here.

My family will be en route to San Francisco by tomorrow morning and come early Thursday, the house will smell of baking turkey and sound of screaming football fans. (Not kidding about the screaming part. The neighbors have complained.)

It’s at this time of year, more than any other, that we’re compelled to pause and appreciate what we have – family, friends, health, a place to live and food to eat.

If you’re traveling to visit family or friends this week, I urge you to share your knowledge of OpenDNS and help keep them safe from phishing. Perhaps they don’t know what phishing is, even. Think about how much you’ve benefited from the service and know you can pass the benefit along. Take two minutes to add 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220 to their Internet preferences and know you’ve done them a service – one that will give over and over again.

If you choose to share OpenDNS, tell us about it. We’d love to hear.

PS – A reminder to print the instructions out before you travel. If you don’t know what type of router your friends or family use, our single computer instructions for Mac and Windows are a good way to go.

PPS – If you live in a part of the world that doesn’t celebrate Thanksgiving, this is still as good a time as any to tell friends and family. Giving thanks shouldn’t happen only once a year, anyway.

There’s an opportunity for software developers of Dynamic DNS clients. We’d like to help promote your software, as soon as it meets these two requirements:

• Support Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) for HTTPS updates
• Allow the user to change the Dynamic DNS update URL to the OpenDNS update URL

If your software supports those two requirements, we’re quite happy to list it as an option for OpenDNS customers and help you get more users for your software, whether it’s commercial, freeware, or anywhere in between.

Background

With last week’s introduction of OpenDNS Accounts, OpenDNS supports DNS preferences and statistics for users with dynamic IP addresses through Dynamic DNS. There are many, many individuals with dynamic IP addresses, so we know this step opens up our service dramatically.

Dynamic DNS (DDNS) requires running client software on your computer, as described in the DDNS instructions. Right now, OpenDNS offers working client software that’s only for the technically savvy. The software is a modification of the open-source command line client inadyn by OpenDNS to support Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), if you’re curious.

We’re not client software developers. The only reason we released anything was because the clients we found either did not support SSL or would not let you (the customer) change the DDNS update URL to the OpenDNS update URL, as listed on the OpenDNS DDNS instructions page.

The good news? There is already a vibrant ecosystem of DDNS client software. However, we didn’t find anything that met both of our requirements just yet. The closest one was DynSite, a Windows client which supports SSL, but doesn’t support OpenDNS’s update URL.

If we missed a working candidate, let us know!

Next steps

If you’re a developer of DDNS client software, please get in touch. We’d like to help or answer questions as best we can.

If you’re already using DDNS client software and would like to use the same software for managing your OpenDNS Account (makes sense to me!), then please ask the developer (politely) if adding SSL support and OpenDNS update URL support (or just allowing update URL choice) is on their radar.

Reminder

You can use OpenDNS without an account if speedy, reliable DNS with the default preferences is what you need.

OpenDNS note: Mike was one of our first users. He turned us on way back in July!

Mike Lucas
Professional Geek

OpenDNS: How did you first learn what DNS stands for?

ML: Hard to remember exactly when. I’ve been very interested in working with computers for over ten years now. I will admit though that up until maybe just a year or two ago, I never put much thought into the performance of the DNS servers that I used. I always just used the ones provided to me by my ISP, without knowing I had choices in the DNS servers I used, or that there were better ones out there.

OpenDNS: What improvements has OpenDNS made to your Internet experience?

ML: Faster DNS lookup times, and the reliability of the DNS servers, would be the most immediate and noticeable improvement. My ISP that I get my cable modem service from has been growing greatly over the last several years, and over the last year especially has been adding new customers at an extraordinary rate. Maybe about 6 to 8 months ago I first started to experience problems with my ISP’s DNS servers. I started repeatedly receiving failed DNS lookups to websites that I knew to be working. I didn’t narrow the problem down to DNS for a few days really, and only did after I had eliminated the possibility of it being a new Firefox bug or a wrong setting in my network somewhere. I finally realized the problem was in fact my ISP’s DNS servers as it was only occurring at peak times, at nights and on weekends, times when the majority of my ISP’s customers were all online, and the DNS servers were being overloaded. I first started using a local network DNS program called TreewalkDNS to resolve the issue, which did eliminate my problems, and then several months later I read a news story on CNET about the launching of OpenDNS. The same day I uninstalled TreewalkDNS to give OpenDNS a try, and have never switched back.

OpenDNS: What advice would you offer to other geeks considering switching to OpenDNS?

ML: Just give it a try. It’s very easy to start using, OpenDNS.com provides very easy-to-follow, step-by-step instructions, with pictures even, on how to start using OpenDNS on all operating systems and in hardware routers. There’s no software to install, so operating system compatibility is not even an issue. The instructions are very easy to follow even for an average or even sub-average computer user. You will more then likely notice the difference immediately, and if not, you can just switch back to your ISP’s DNS servers at any time. But once you try OpenDNS, you won’t be switching back.

OpenDNS: Is OpenDNS really “Safer, Faster and Smarter” like we claim?

ML: Absolutely. Not only is OpenDNS more reliable then my ISP’s DNS servers, it is considerably faster. I achieve faster DNS lookups using OpenDNS then I did even while using TreewalkDNS. It has made every part of my internet use faster, from web browsing to instant messaging to anti-virus updates. And it is definitely safer as well. The latest versions of both Firefox and Internet Explorer now have built-in phishing protection, but these rely on an internet server to provide the list of known phishing websites. OpenDNS’s filtering of known phishing sites at the DNS level is smarter, because it can not go down without your entire DNS going down too, which has never happened. Not even once in all my time using OpenDNS. And it is also faster in this area, connecting to one server for both your DNS and your phishing protection and at the same time. Without a doubt, OpenDNS is safer, is faster, and is smarter.

OpenDNS: What’s the hardest part about being a geek?

ML: People automatically assuming I can fix any problem with their computer no matter what it is – and do it quickly. Anyone with experience fixing computers knows this is not always the case, but I try my best.

As we mentioned over on the PhishTank blog, Mozilla, maker of Firefox, announced today it selected PhishTank data as the benchmark for comparing phishing protection in Firefox 2.0 and Internet Explorer 7.0. This is a big deal, considering the number of phishing-data sources to choose from.

The results? Firefox blocked 243 phishing sites that IE7 missed, making it the better of the two at blocking phishing sites, according to third-party evaluator (hired by Mozilla) Smartware.

Check out today’s articles about the testing in Slashdot, SearchSecurity and The Washington Post.

If you’re not a member of the PhishTank community yet, we hope this validation is the motivation you needed.

John and Allison
(picture by David)

LaunchPad area
for first-time exhibitors

Kiosk O
for OpenDNS

For three days this week, three members of the OpenDNS team were in Santa Clara, California at ISPCON, sharing OpenDNS with a bustling group of ISPs and infrastructure vendors of all sizes.

The show operated smoothly, and we got the chance to tell lots of new folks about why OpenDNS can deliver great DNS for ISPs and their customers. Tuesday and Wednesday were pretty busy. Thursday morning was quiet, but by that time, so were we!

Launching Accounts for the conference was useful, mostly because there are some great features for ISPs and others running large networks that will be built on top of Accounts.

Many thanks to Denise Miller and the rest of the ISPCON team (The Golden Group) for running a good show and helping us out with some special requests.

See the new tab up there, at the far right? It says My Account. Go ahead and take a look. Or read on for why you’ll want to create a free account. You can find the tab and Sign In link at the upper right of every page of the OpenDNS website.

OpenDNS invited the public to use its free, reliable DNS service for the first time on July 10, 2006. Less than a week later, we introduced preferences for OpenDNS, which gave the individual user the opportunity to manage their DNS in a way that had never before been possible. Later, at customer request, we used our platform to offer choice in their response to Cameroon’s TLD policies.

OpenDNS Accounts represents the next step in our commitment to give our customers choice and control.

We talk a lot about “Safer, Faster and Smarter” DNS built on a rock-solid and reliable foundation. A big part of being safer and smarter means giving you control. That’s what OpenDNS Accounts is all about.

When was the last time your DNS improved?

It doesn’t matter if you have one IP at home that you manage or a massive network of disconnected offices — OpenDNS Accounts is for you.

Secure
Registration, sign in, and all profile and preferences are managed with a username and password on a secure, encrypted site using SSL (like your bank does).

Dynamic DNS Support
OpenDNS Accounts support the use of dynamic DNS (DDNS) update mechanisms to allow you to securely manage your Account and get your preferences even with a dynamic IP address. Read for details. Note: Because OpenDNS uses SSL, there are several very good DDNS clients which do not (yet) work. We are going to encourage various developers to add support for SSL to their otherwise very strong DDNS software.

Statistics
Everyone from individuals to network operators will enjoy a bit of insight into statistics about their DNS usage. How many DNS requests per day do you make? How many individual domains per day do you resolve? On that pretty graph I see for the OpenDNS service, what am I contributing? Basically, we’re taking the stats we show the public and giving you similar insight with the stats that relate to your DNS traffic.

Just as a heads up — while DNS resolution is blinding fast (as always), our stats processing happens (as our network guys say) out-of-band and is done separately. You will not see statistics immediately (at least, not just yet). It may take as long as 48 hours for your stats to appear.

We feel strongly that this is a platform for DNS unlike anything that has ever existed before and continues to help OpenDNS bring about evolutionary changes to the DNS that dramatically change the end-user experience.

P.S. If you have OpenDNS preferences, they will continue to work until they are superseded by an OpenDNS Account with the same IP address. We suggest that anyone using OpenDNS preferences set up a free account now and verify your IP address.