A few weeks ago we made the decision that SmartCache, one of OpenDNS’s most significant DNS caching innovations, would be available for free to all of our 15 million users around the world, regardless of which version of the service you’re using. SmartCache keeps track of the last known good IPs for Web sites that are experiencing an authoritative DNS outage and hands them back instead of returning no answer. In many cases, the IPs associated with the web server or other services you are trying to reach work just fine and the Web site loads successfully. Without SmartCache, it’d feel like the site was down. So in effect, SmartCache makes Web sites that are down and unreachable for the rest of the Internet load for OpenDNS users.

In order to take advantage of SmartCache, you still need to take action and enable it on your network. Here’s how to do it:

1. Log in to your OpenDNS account.
2. Go to the Settings tab.
3. Select the network you want to enable SmartCache for.
4. Choose Advanced Settings.
5. Select “Enable SmartCache on this Network” at the top.

That’s it. Just five steps. We encourage you to take a few minutes and enable it since it’s such a fantastic feature.