It’s been a long time coming, but we are now online and operational in London! We actually turned up our routing announcements about two days ago but I wanted to hold off on the blog post to make sure everything was stable. Some folks in the forums noticed we were online and beat me to the announcement.

I’ve been using a server in Amsterdam, hosted by my friend Peter, to test how latency changed when London came online. It should be obvious, but the results are very good and show just how important it is for us to be online in Europe.

From Amsterdam to OpenDNS before London goes online:
bash$ ping 208.67.222.222
64 bytes from 208.67.222.222: icmp_seq=0 ttl=57 time=145.077 ms
64 bytes from 208.67.222.222: icmp_seq=1 ttl=57 time=152.962 ms
From Amsterdam to OpenDNS after London goes online:
bash$ ping 208.67.222.222
64 bytes from 208.67.222.222: icmp_seq=0 ttl=58 time=9.814 ms
64 bytes from 208.67.222.222: icmp_seq=1 ttl=58 time=9.528 ms

The ping test above is a measurement of how long it takes one “packet” of Internet data to reach another host on the Internet. Bringing London online dramatically increases our reliability, speed and performance for our European users. Additionally, it decreases load in New York and Washington DC providing a win for our users in the US as well. Finally, the more sites we have, the more reliable our network becomes and that is a win for everyone.

We are online in London thanks to the efforts of a few really superb technologists and friends. I’d like to thank James Rice for his on-site help as well as his excellent guidance and advice along with Nick Waterman who fixed a minor issue we were having with our IBM BladeCenter chassis. Nick did this on December 29th, when he could have been at home with family or out partying; we really appreciate it Nick. James and Nick run Jump Networks, a high-quality, technically-savvy service provider in London.

I’d also like to give a big thanks to Chris Orme and Philip Baker from Datahop, a metropolitan fiber network in London which provides all kinds of really convenient network services. Chris worked tirelessly to make sure we could be online with our transit provider, NTT Europe in a timely fashion. It’s hard work getting folks to do things during the holidays and Chris made sure it happened. Even more impressive, Philip spent time late at night with our routers and switches making sure they were in good shape to turn up a BGP session with NTT Europe. James, Nick, Chris and Philip all went way above and beyond the call of duty and we appreciate it. I highly recommend both Jump and Datahop to anyone looking for transit and colo in London. Thanks guys!

We’re proud to be in London and look forward to peering with networks currently connected to LoNAP, a growing peering point in London. We are also considering a peering session at LINX, one of the largest exchange points in the world.

Happy New Year from everyone here at OpenDNS and we’ll see you in 2007!

We launched Forums today for you to provide a venue to discuss the world of OpenDNS. This isn’t a weak attempt to get rid of support but is a new way for our users to communicate with us and each other. We are focused on delivering the best experience possible we know that in order to do that we have to hear from you.

OpenDNS will continue to respond to its users in all the current ways: email, IM, blogs and comments, phone, and (occasionally!) in person. But every time one of us answers a question for an individual customer, we’ve wanted to share that tip, lesson, or workaround with a broader audience. Forums let us do that…and Forums will be a great place for OpenDNS users to share with each other, too.

Our short-term goals are to learn more about specific situations we already know need more attention, like instructions for setting DNS on a Samsung Blackjack phone or learning whether or not WildBue satellite broadband customers can use OpenDNS or not (reports vary).

Of course, we’ll also answer questions there so that others can benefit from the answers. Longer term, we expect to find out where our users want us to go.

A free OpenDNS account is required to post, to limit noise. Your OpenDNS account is also useful for preferences, statistics, and dynamic DNS support.

Please join in at http://forums.opendns.com/ and let us know what you think.

We get lots of email, everyday, from our customers. Most of the emails are similar in topic – someone asking how to use OpenDNS with their setup. But every once in a while an email comes through that’s so touching we pass it around the office. The below note from Caio, a customer in Brazil, is that kind of email.

He wrote us not because he had a problem, but rather just to say thanks, for saving his job.

It’s this sort of reinforcement that makes me love what I do. We all need the Internet and I get to work with a team that makes it more reliable — saving people time, frustration and in this case, their job.

Caio gave me permission to share his email.

To: contact@opendns.com
From: caio@xxxxx.com
Subject: Thank you


Hello,

I’m just happy that I found a free service like this on the Internet.

I live in Brazil and sometimes my default DNS fails, then I can’t connect to the Internet. I’m a trainee and I work in a hardware store and my job is half in the office and half in my house. When I’m home I need to make tables about what we have sold on everyday using MS Office Excel. Today my DNS wasn’t working and a DNS fail means a layoff for me. I figured it was a DNS problem because Firefox was unable to open any page but, when I tried to open a page by its IP, nothing wrong happens.

I used OpenDNS and it saved me by allowing me to connect and send to my boss. This is how OpenDNS saved my job.

Thank You. I’m really loving it.

-Caio

Happy holidays everyone.

Today is a big milestone for OpenDNS. We served over 500,000,000 DNS requests in a single day. It seems like just yesterday that we hit 4 billion queries total and 100,000,000 queries per day. That’s child’s play these days.

If you’ve liked us in 2006, you’re going to love us in 2007. We’ve got some really fantastic technologies coming together that are going to continue to make the Internet a sweeter place to be (and it’s pretty sweet already).



Now if only I had a dollar for every DNS query…

We’ve announced OpenDNS CacheCheck, available at http://cache.opendns.com. If you wonder what’s in the OpenDNS cache for a domain, take a look. If you want OpenDNS to refresh its cache for a domain, use CacheCheck to do it yourself.

Background on CacheCheck

Because we’ve seen such vibrant adoption (thanks!), OpenDNS has established itself as the leader in recursive DNS services. People expect more from a leader, as they should. So, when a domain doesn’t resolve — especially one they’ve visited successfully before — users are quick to ask us “What’s wrong? Why does ‘insert-domain-name-here’ not resolve?”

We welcome these questions: our entire company is built around getting you where you want to go on the Internet as fast as possible and as reliably as possible. If there’s a problem we can fix, we want to know about it immediately.

But we’re not responsible for the entire DNS; we’re just a visible link in the chain. When a valid domain is not resolving, there are two common possibilities:

1. the domain is being moved, and the old address is still cached since the Time-To-Live (TTL) has not expired
2. the domain’s nameservers are not responding

For #1, CacheCheck lets you fix the problem immediately. OpenDNS has a huge cache to help make your Internet experience faster. OpenDNS usually holds an address for the full TTL (never longer!!). So, if a domain has been moved without lowering the TTL first, we may have the old address cached. CacheCheck, please! (groan)

We can’t do anything about #2 yet, but we can make the situation clear both to the domain owner and the would-be website visitor.

CacheCheck came from an internal tool we built to let us peek into our cache, and selectively clear it. Today, that unique functionality is available to everyone. No one else offers this kind of control and insight. You can ask any recursive DNS server for an address, but if the answer is wrong, there’s no recourse and little information.

Domain owners, especially, should find this first-of-its-kind tool valuable for domain management. Everything we do at OpenDNS is aimed at making the Internet better through DNS. CacheCheck is our first feature aimed squarely at domain owners. Fortunately, anyone who visits a website benefits, too.

P.S. Terri Wells at Devshed got some early insight into this tool for her article “OpenDNS on Mission to Improve Domain Name System” published last week. See page 4.

P.P.S. For the record, OpenDNS always suggests lowering TTL before migrating a domain to a new server. But we understand that domain migrations are not always planned, so CacheCheck can help domain owners out of a BIND (bad DNS humor).

Opera and OpenDNS announced this morning that the latest version of the browser blocks phishing sites with PhishTank data. We’re pretty excited about it. (Just blogged about this over on the PhishTank blog, too.)

If you’re poking around the site because you were given the Gift of Safe by an Opera user, welcome.

If you have any problems setting up OpenDNS don’t hesitate to e-mail us at contact at opendns dot com. We’ll reply asap and help you get started. And once you’re all set, pay it forward. Give the Gift of Safe to everyone you want to protect from phishing sites.

If you’d like to add your story, send it along with a photo to gift of safe at opendns dot com. It’s a great way to show someone you care about them without spending any money.

Lifehacker loves OpenDNS and OpenDNS loves Gina Trapani, the editor over at Lifehacker. Gina named OpenDNS as one of The Best Apps of 2006!

We’re honored to be given this award. I know we will be doing great new things in 2007 to try and earn this award again.

For those of you who don’t know, Lifehacker is a site that talks about ways you can use technology to make your life easier. As they put it: “Computers make us more productive. Yeah, right. Lifehacker recommends the software downloads and web sites that actually save time. Don’t live to geek; geek to live.”

As a longtime reader of Lifehacker, I’d encourage you to check it out and make your life safer, faster and smarter in areas outside of the DNS too. And we swear that we loved Lifehacker tons even before this award.

John Fitch
Big Geek Daddy

OpenDNS: Tell us about yourself. What do you do for a living?

JF: I’m a former Marine with a BA in History and a MBA and I’m currently in sales for a Fortune 100 company. I’ve been married for over 10 years to my beautiful wife and have a son as well as a daughter who was born just 4 weeks ago. I got into computers about 6 years ago when my Geek friend Mike convinced me to build my own PC. I’ve been hooked ever since and am a completely self-taught Geek as I’ve never taken a single course on anything to do with computers. I just turned 40 so when I went to school PCs were still a rarity. I’m not an expert on anything related to computers, just a friendly neighborhood Geek as many of my neighbors and friends now come to me with their computer problems and questions. I enjoy building computers more than fixing them and like to spend time playing PC Games with my son and by myself when I get the chance.

OpenDNS: How did you come up with the name for your Web site?

JF: Pretty silly really. Last Christmas I had a couple weeks of unused vacation that I was taking and a few days into it I was looking at some websites and just wondered how hard it would be to create my own for fun. My friends and I joke that I’m a Computer Geek and that’s how I let people know I enjoy computers as a hobby, by referring to myself as a Geek. (For the record, I’m a Geek, not a Nerd.) So once I found a site to host my website I started searching for any domain names that had to do with Geek that were available. As you would expect, many are already taken. I wanted the name to be funny and easy for people to remember so I settled on Big Geek Daddy cause I’m 6’3″ 210lbs, a Computer Geek, and a Daddy. My goal with the website is simply to create a place where other people can find useful resources about computing, many of which are free, and have fun doing it at the same time. If I make any money off of it in the process then that’s just an added bonus.

OpenDNS: What changes to you Internet experience have you noticed since switching to OpenDNS?

JF: The biggest change I’ve noticed is how much faster web pages open with less errors – it is definitely noticeable.

OpenDNS: Who would you recommend OpenDNS to?

JF: Everyone. The excellent directions with pictures you have on your website on how to correctly set up OpenDNS really make installing it pretty easy. My exact router wasn’t listed so I just picked the router from the same manufacturer that was closest and the directions worked fine. OpenDNS is an easy way to add another level of security to your PC plus get a faster internet connection and best of all it’s FREE!

OpenDNS: How many hours do you spend per day looking for videos to add to your archive?

JF: Not as many as you’d think. On average I spend less than 20 minutes per day looking at funny videos on the web. Of course that adds up to about 2 hours a week which would be excessive for many people. My tradeoff is that I tend to watch less than two hours of TV shows each week. Many of the videos are actually sent to me by friends as well so I don’t have to search for them. It takes me about 30 minutes each week to update the humor section of Big Geek Daddy. I do spend an additional 1-3 hours a day on the internet working with my website or blog, online store, checking email, and just viewing other people’s websites.