Ok. Maybe not everyone, yet. But check out our newly added success stories and see the wide array of businesses who’ve turned us on.
There’s Duarte Design, a Mountain View, CA-based creative agency that has testimonials from a past U.S. Vice President and Citrix CEO Mark Templeton on its website. Allison S.p.A., a high-fashion eyewear company in Italy, also uses OpenDNS.
You think I could leverage my name to get some free sunglasses?
john
More people would use it if……
1. Release all of the source code for your DNS servers and ad system. Until then, the public cannot trust your company because we cannot see under the covers.
2. Your privacy policy indicates that you can make available or provide aggregate DNS data. You should make it more clear on your site whether you are selling this data. This is not bad in itself, but it should be disclosed that you are using data provided by your users in additional ways to make money. If you are not selling this data, you are missing a viable revenue stream.
3. Publish statistics on DNS resolution speeds. Some out there are complaining that the service is slow.
I personally use your service and think it has enormous potential. I do believe that it should be more aggressively sold and marketed and I assume your backers think so too.
One other question - do you have any competition? I cannot find any other service like this.
posted on January 23rd, 2007 at 10:13 pm
John Roberts
John,
First, thank you for using our service, and I appreciate your sense that we have enormous potential. All of us think so, too, as long we keep delivering great service.
As to more aggressively marketing what we do… we’re open to all ideas. We haven’t tried to hide!
As to competition…I think OpenDNS stands alone in offering a free recursive DNS service which blends speed, reliability and intelligent features (phishing prevention, typo correction, and individual DNS preferences). Helping people understand how much DNS matters is probably the hardest part, but there are lots of smart folks out there, and we’re continually working to expand the reasons why OpenDNS can help improve your experience.
We’d love to put out benchmarks regarding speed. Unfortunately, we don’t have anything “hard” — simply lots of individual anecdotes, which you can peruse in our Blog Buzz or Press Coverage sections.
http://www.opendns.com/about/
If you (or anyone) is aware of a useful benchmark test we can run, we’re happy to help organize tests from different parts of the world.
Note that DNS speed is two things: software speed (including cache size) and network latency. OpenDNS is lightning on the first part, and faster all the time on the second part, as we distribute our servers to more points of the globe.
Folks in Asia and Australia are using us now even though we’re across a very large ocean because our software speed means they get a faster DNS from OpenDNS even when the ping time is a few ms slower.
Would be happy to see pointers to those who say we are slower. We like learning where we can improve.
We are not selling data.
Whether our source code is open or not is a red herring as to whether you can trust us or not. Sure, looking at our source code would demonstrate how good some of my colleagues are as programmers, but it’s not a measure of trustworthiness.
If we don’t deliver a great service, you stop using OpenDNS. We are a choice. And our stats (http://www.opendns.com/stats/) show that many people (more all the time) are making that choice, as you have.
Note: we use open source code in lots of places because the software is well-done and the price is right. That fact in of itself doesn’t make us more or less trustworthy.
John, thank you for being interested enough to comment. We must continue to earn your usage through delivering a great service. I hope we will, and that you’ll continue to share your ideas about how we can improve.
Cheers,
John Roberts
OpenDNS
posted on January 24th, 2007 at 10:41 am
john
Hi John - I appreciate the response it’s quite informative especially with regard to the speed benchmarks. I work for a large authoritative DNS provider and always find this stuff quite interesting.
Here is a pointer to Leo Laporte mentioning the service is slow on his KTI Tech Guy radio show and podcast: http://leo.am/radio/ShowNotes/Show318#toc18 (mentions openDNS briefly but on the actual podcast he says a few times it is slow). Maybe you can reach out to him and see where he is getting this from? His opinions could almost make or break a company.
Anyway, keep up the good work. Too bad you’re not in NYC otherwise I’d send over a resume
posted on January 25th, 2007 at 9:20 am
John Roberts
We noted Leo’s comments, and we’ve been trying to reach out to him without success so far. David Pogue found OpenDNS fast enough to say he would pay for it (though it’s free), so I suppose different people have different experiences.
Speed is not the only benefit, either.
posted on January 25th, 2007 at 9:25 am
DIEGO
THIS OPENDNS THING SOUNDS PRETTY COOL LETS SEE HOW IT WORKS…
posted on January 29th, 2007 at 9:12 am
David Sutherland
I heard about OpenDNS originally from Leo Laporte and then tried it anyway despite his comments and have now just set our enterprise on it.
Bad press can still be good press, but I agree — push Leo to explain himself objectively — so far I’m thrilled with anything that improves browsing safety at no cost and claims to improve speed.
posted on January 31st, 2007 at 12:01 am