Today we announced one of the most significant DNS innovations of the last 25 years. SmartCache, our new DNS record-handling technology, renders frustrating authoritative DNS outages irrelevant for OpenDNS users. It’s both incredibly simple and invaluable to Internet users.
Here’s how it works: When an authoritative DNS provider suffers an outage, all of the Web sites it provides service to are taken offline. They’re inaccessible for everyone on the Internet. But no longer for OpenDNS users. Our servers will now immediately look for the last known good address for the site in our caches, and use that to load the site. So effectively OpenDNS users will be able to access Web sites that appear down for everyone else. For our millions of users at businesses, schools and libraries around the world, saving them Internet access interruptions and the time they waste is invaluable.
Authoritative DNS outages happen frequently and can be a big problem. Just a few weeks ago, it’s reported that major authoritative DNS provider UltraDNS suffered an outage that took Salesforce.com, Amazon.com and Petco.com offline for several hours. In such a case, SmartCache would fix the inaccessibility problem and allow people to visit the sites through the outage.
This is just the latest in a long series of DNS innovations we’ve developed and passed on to you. Most recently it was blocking the Conficker worm from phoning home. By blocking the domain names the worm used, we were and continue to be able to protect people around the globe. Trust that we’re committed to continue to innovate and give you easy-to-use services that make your Internet experience better.
SmartCache is available immediately as an opt-in feature. Just log in to your dashboard and look for the check box in your Advanced Settings. For those tech geeks, this only applies to queries where the authoritative server hands back a SERVFAIL response code in addition to any query that simply goes unanswered.
Let us know what you think of the new feature in the comments here.
Adam Windisch
Sounds great. I just enabled it. Keep up the good work.
posted on April 24th, 2009 at 10:41 am
Dave G.
This is fantastic! Earlier this week Network Solutions had problems with their worldnic name servers failing. SmartCache would have solved that problem for users on my network. I was actually going to ask if you could look into implementing a system like this but looks like you beat me to it! Thanks!
posted on April 24th, 2009 at 10:47 am
Ken Logan
I see a day in the not so distant future when millions of computers are tuned to 208.67.222.222! Tomorrow looks safe.
posted on April 24th, 2009 at 9:57 pm
filex
Interesting, I will try it.
posted on April 25th, 2009 at 12:55 pm
iHC
I highly recommend the use of opendns! this smartcache thing is just great. thanks for the new feature! keep on doing, what you’re doing!
posted on April 26th, 2009 at 8:22 am
David Murphy
This is something that should be part of the RFC for DNS and you would think, even created long ago, that it would have been a default functionality. Excellent focus.
posted on April 26th, 2009 at 12:42 pm
Mark
Great new feature. Is there any way for an OpenDNS administrator account to tell when the SmartCache has been used (i.e. logs), for a general knowledge that the feature is a) working and b) in case you want to notify the destination host that their DNS servers are down?
posted on April 27th, 2009 at 6:27 am
Dave
Hey this is a great new feature.
Good Work
posted on April 28th, 2009 at 7:49 am
Mark
Very cool, I just checked out stats and see a new area added for SmartCache. Thanks OpenDNS!
posted on April 28th, 2009 at 2:58 pm
Andrew from Vancouver
Nice work, David!
This is a very good idea, in particular considering that UltraDNS and NetworkSolutions both had notable outages this year (and we’re only four months in!)
posted on April 28th, 2009 at 5:48 pm
Matt Nordhoff
This sounds like a nice new feature. Thanks for letting me enable it even though I don’t have things like typo correction enabled.
posted on April 29th, 2009 at 7:14 pm
Dante D. Dinawanao
First it was OPEN. Now, it’s getting SMARTER! You guys are really doing your thing.
posted on April 30th, 2009 at 11:05 pm
Bill Sodeman
Good work! This might solve a few issues I’ve seen.
posted on May 1st, 2009 at 11:31 am
Nik Cook
Excellent service that you provide beats others hands down.
Many times i have had problems getting on sites but with this set up here no problems at all.
Many Thanks
posted on May 5th, 2009 at 12:48 pm
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[…] note that OpenDNS users will be able to access Web sites that appear down for everyone else. SmartCache is their new DNS record-handling technology, that renders authoritative DNS outages irrelevant for […]
posted on May 6th, 2009 at 3:07 am
r tazuma
One question I have is what will happen when the DNS server or particular A record was taken out on purpose due to an exploit found at the server IP address. Will the OpenDNS clients still be sent to this IP address and possibly get the exploit downloaded? There isn’t any standard way with how administrators react to an exploited server and alter the DNS resolving to that server.
posted on May 6th, 2009 at 12:03 pm
Adam
Neat-o idea
Ever since the beginning of time, I’ve been hard-coding my “favorite” domains in my Hosts file 
You know, those important/high level corporations/domains, that are not ran on dynamic IPs, and their IP addresses don’t change every day 
This will save me editting my hosts file.
Only one caveat, for tech support help with customers:
me: go to domain.com to scan your computer
them: eerrr….the site’s down.
me: hmm….not for me…
[insert OpenDNS comment/jibberjabber lol and recommend they take the switch]
posted on May 6th, 2009 at 1:59 pm
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[…] note that OpenDNS users will be able to access Web sites that appear down for everyone else. SmartCache is their new DNS record-handling technology, which renders authoritative DNS outages irrelevant for […]
posted on May 8th, 2009 at 3:32 am
Mickey Blue Eyes
Will this solve the YouTube slowness issue as reported on The Consumerist? [1] I’d hate to have to stop using OpenDNS whenever I view a video on YouTube.
http://consumerist.com/5244884/mystery-solved-using-opendns-results-in-glacial-youtube-downloads-for-qwest-customers
posted on May 8th, 2009 at 10:43 am
Alberto Montes
You guys are really pushing the envelope
way to go!
posted on May 10th, 2009 at 6:30 am
rachmat
thanx very much opendns,
it’s very anoying that my ISP too much block anything,
the rules of internet is free surf,
i will review your excellent service in my next topic of my blog.
posted on May 12th, 2009 at 4:17 pm
Matthew Elvey
Have you set up a test domain? (None at http://forums.opendns.com/comments.php?DiscussionID=3635&page=1#Item_0)
Do you simply provide the IPs that the authoritative nameservers last provided, or do you, say, first try and show a transition page? (I assume the former, as I think the latter would be nice but could only be done unreliably.)
Any exceptions? E.g, what about DNSBLs?
Glad to see this requires explicit opt-in.
posted on May 19th, 2009 at 8:09 am
Matthew Elvey
BTW, David, I have to nitpick. (And I admit, this is not a big deal.)
You’re overstating the problem. “When an authoritative DNS provider suffers an outage, all of the Web sites it provides service to are taken offline. They’re inaccessible for everyone on the Internet.” Not really.
1)If one of multiple DNS servers goes down (e.g. ns1.provider1.dom but not ns2.provider2.dom), http://web.site.dom will still be mostly accessible.
2)If all of the authoritative DNS servers for web.site.dom go down, but it has a long TTL, http://web.site.dom will still be accessible for a while by most users, (Site popularity, caching server popularity, and TTL will each factor in.
P.S. Still up for that lunch meeting you offered? (http://www.circleid.com/posts/opendns_anti_phishing_typosquatter_no_sitefinder/)
posted on May 19th, 2009 at 8:27 am
Matt
Awesome for those times when my local DNS server’s cache expires, as it feeds itself from OpenDNS. Just enabled for all my nets.
posted on May 19th, 2009 at 10:48 pm
Joseph Miller
I have a website hosted at a GoDaddy server and their DNS servers are currently misbehaving or are down. I have now switched to OpenDNS and I’m back on track. took less than five minutes.
posted on May 21st, 2009 at 6:01 am
Matthew Elvey
@ Mark: Yes, you can. The site’s log searching/viewing tool has an option to just show SmartCache hits. I ran a search. No usage yet.
posted on May 22nd, 2009 at 9:14 am
John Hilla
Road Runner DNS servers went down yesterday preventing Facebook applications like FarmTown from working. I was suggested to make the switch and everything is restored. Thank you.
posted on May 23rd, 2009 at 1:31 pm
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posted on May 25th, 2009 at 10:22 pm
Joe Sniderman
Ok, this I definitely like the sound of.
For a long while I was running my own nameserver in my living room, due to my ISP’s nameservers being less than reliable. I had it set up to use the root servers and then recrusively resolve the lookups. This worked great, except for in the types of situations smartcache addresses: SERVFAIL on the authoritative servers. ( which seems to happen more often than i would like )
While it would technically be possible to impliment something similar at home, it would be pointless to do so. Since I am the only user here, any domain I myself hadn’t looked up recently wouldn’t be cached. With OpenDNS, everyone benifits from everyone else’s usage.
For now, I’m using OpenDNS.. What I may do later is have my nameserver in the livingroom, but set OpenDNS nameservers as the forwarders.
To be fully honest I’m not a big fan of the ‘Guide’ page and whatnot (personally i would rather just get NXDOMAIN if the domain really doesn’t exist), but at this point the pro’s outweigh the cons.
posted on May 31st, 2009 at 11:35 am
Matthew Elvey
@Joseph: Cool. Of course, be sure to determine what the problem is and whether you need to do anything, as most folks don’t use OpenDNS, and the site remains down for them when SmartCache keeps it up for you.
I’m curious what the problem was; is GoDaddy’s DNS still unreliable? I did read that their DNS servers were down for a while back on Sunday, March 11, 2007, because GoDaddy did not address problems resulting from the new Daylight Saving Time scheme even though customer complaints about the un-fixed problem were noted by executives who said they’d been addressed. They still haven’t learned a lesson?
posted on June 1st, 2009 at 5:05 pm
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posted on June 10th, 2009 at 1:33 pm
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posted on June 15th, 2009 at 8:00 am
lastminute reizen
Great feature. Is this part of the RFC for DNS and how does is relate to negative cache?
posted on June 17th, 2009 at 2:42 pm
Alexus
OpenDNS is great !
i prefer it to everyone
but someplayers dont understand it because the cant english.
can you translate this site to german,sspanish,turkish …
it would be great if you can !
posted on August 17th, 2009 at 4:14 am
King
Great Hope we have opendns here in the philippines or in japan or hongkong or china.
posted on October 15th, 2009 at 10:13 am