Last night, millions of people across the eastern seaboard found themselves unable to go online and access the Internet. The culprit? A Comcast DNS outage that lasted more than three hours and affected customers from Boston to Baltimore. These kinds of attacks can hit anyone, including us. And it’s likely that if an attack was large enough to disrupt Comcast, it could be large enough to disrupt us. That’s scary.

When we launched introduced OpenDNS more than four years ago, our promise was this: the fastest, most reliable DNS service available. Since then we’ve added features and built out enhancements including malware protection, Web content filtering and SmartCache. That said, offering ultra-reliable DNS service is still at the core of what we do. This is part of the reason why we added a new datacenter in Singapore recently.

Over the past four+ years, we have been fortunate to have a perfect, 100 percent uptime record and we will work hard to maintain that. As we saw with Comcast last night, even great ISPs have outages when attacked with massive amounts of malicious traffic. This is why we will continue to add capacity, far in excess of what we actually need. The real solution to this is better security for end-users so they don’t get infected and become vehicles for DDoS attacks.

So, if you just got set up with OpenDNS last night, welcome! Hopefully last night was the last time you’ll ever be without Internet due to a DNS issue. We’ll work hard to make sure it was. If you’ve been set up with OpenDNS for a while now, you probably didn’t notice there was any issue at all.

Earlier this month, OpenDNS launched a new program — OpenDNS for Managed Service Providers. Today we’re chatting with Conor Quinlan, CEO of MePush, a Penn. based Managed Service Provider, about what Managed Service Providers do, horror stories from the field, and why OpenDNS Enterprise is such a fantastic solution for their clients.

Tell us a little bit about MePush?
MePush Inc is not Geek Squad, we are not a group of IT super geeks in a back room. We are a nimble team with a solid balance of IT skills and personality. Our customers love us because we can speak their language, we can break it down and make a business case and not just tell them they need something because it is fast, etc. Our business is built on long term relationships so we we build raving fans and not mere customers. We focus primarily on business, home office and residential computer repair and network services.

Can you explain what a managed service provider does?
A managed service provider is there to guide a client’s technologically, as it relates to their business. Our MSP clients not only get a managed network with all the proactive bells and whistles, but more importantly they get a partner that helps guide their business from a technology standpoint. We see ourselves as an in-house CTO.

What’s exciting about being able to offer OpenDNS Enterprise to your customers?
Simplicity. Simplicity. Simplicity. No hardware, no difficult setup. No custom configs. I can install it in five minutes and that includes the three minutes your DNS servers need to propogate my changes. We also love the potential for the virus-free network. We coach our clients to assume that anti-virus alone is a horrible solution. They need pre-network protection. Thus OpenDNS Enterprise.

Any horror stories of removing malware or viruses from customer workstations or networks?
Sure. But this blog is rated G. If it were R rated we could tell you in detail what we have to see on a daily basis when we are cleaning PCs. In our opinion Facebook and porn sites waste a lot of people’s money. But I guess it is good for business.

What tools prove indispensable to you and the rest of the MePush team when you are working?

• Hirens Boot CD
• Ccleaner
• Combofix, Malware Bytes etc
• Suprisingly MS Security Essentials
• Paragon Imaging Tools
• PacketTrap networking monitoring

Interested in answering five questions for the OpenDNS Blog? Let us know!

The team here has been hard at work over the past few months getting a new datacenter set up, and I’m happy to report that as of today, our Singpore datacenter is online and serving production OpenDNS traffic. The Singapore server marks our 12th datacenter globally and the first of a number planned for Asia.

One of the benefits of OpenDNS is that we use a technique called Anycast routing in how we run our network. Anycast means that no matter where you are in the world, your DNS requests route through our closest datacenter. And when we do maintenance that requires us to take a site offline, our routing topology ensures you will route to our next closest datacenter. It also means that when we bring up a new datacenter that is closer to you, your DNS requests will automatically start routing to it. So for the bulk of our users in Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, India and throughout Asia, this new Singapore datacenter promises an even faster Internet.

And here’s a photo of what our installation looks like as it was being racked:

This Singapore datacenter is only the start. We’re planning on adding a new datacenter in Frankfurt, Germany in early 2011. After that, the plan is to continue expanding our footprint from there. As always, you can take a look at our global system status on our Systems page.

PS — Internet routing is not a perfect science and requires a lot of work to get right. If you are in Asia and a traceroute doesn’t show you talking to Singapore for DNS we want to know! Please send a traceroute from your computer to 208.67.222.222 to our support department so we can see which networks in Asia aren’t seeing our new routes.

OpenDNS fans don’t just use us in the workplace — they set us up at home, too. Today we chat with Daniel Côté, who uses OpenDNS to protect his computer and iPad at home.

Tell us a little bit about yourself…
I’m a professor of social work at a university in Ontario. When away from the classroom and computer, I have a personal trainer who keeps me fit. I like tech toys, so I use an iPad to track my fitness progress in a spreadsheet.

Where are you using OpenDNS? At home or in an office?
I use OpenDNS at home for the moment, for both business and personal reasons. I do a lot of research in academic databases and journals online, so connecting to the internet in a fail-safe and efficient way is vital to my work. At home, my router has been redirected to OpenDNS so my iPad also connects to it for DNS services.

2010 is going by so quickly. What’s the best thing that’s happened to you this year?
Hard to say in terms of events. Most fun purchase was a 27 inch iMac that is awesome in terms of performance and usability. Being able to work on full-size side-by-side documents in large format on screen really speeds up my efficiency. Opening up the box this summer felt like Christmas all over again.

If you were stranded on a desert island with only one tech toy, what would you keep?
That’s easy. With no phone service, my iPhone wouldn’t be helpful on a deserted island. I would say the iPad would be great to have. Working to the next level in Angry Birds and in Cut the Rope definitely would help pass the time. Now if only there were some sort of solar panel built into the iPad screen to recharge the unit, I could use it for years while stranded there, right?

What’s the one gift you’d most like to get this holiday season?
Aside from health and well-being for my family and friends, I’d like to have an iPad kind of gizmo built into my vehicle as the main instrument panel.

Interested in answering five questions for the OpenDNS Blog? Let us know!

OpenDNS users are found all over the globe. In today’s Five Questions post, Francisco Aparecido da Silva tells us about the tech scene in Brazil and why he loves using OpenDNS with his students.

Tell us a little bit about yourself.
I’m a Linux SysAdmin at Julio Stampa Distribuidora Ltda., and a teacher at Faculdades Santa Cruz, both in Curitiba, Brazil. I am married to Fabiana Rocio Fabrin and we have two children, Gustavo (ten years old) and Julia (two years old). I love padling, my favorite sport, and walking on the weekend.

What’s the technology community like in Brazil?
In Brazil, we don’t have community focused on DNS technologies but I ‘m involved with SysAdmin communities and Debian GNU/Linux communities. When it comes to DNS technology, OpenDNS is the best one to me.

How did you hear about OpenDNS?
I’ve used OpenDNS since December 2007. A long time ago, I had managed servers with DNS, like BIND, but I was looking for a new way to improve security on the networks I manage … and the security of my students. I’m very happy to know about OpenDNS.

You actually teach students about using OpenDNS as well, right?
Yes. In Faculdades Santa Cruz, I teach about network security. OpenDNS is a very good way to improve security in business, student and, of course, home networks. To students, I show them how to use OpenDNS on every type of network.

If you weren’t involved in technology, what would you do?
Actually I’m involved in technology all the time, with commercial automation, networks security … and I contribute to congresses about free software. Here, in Brazil, we have FISL, Latinoware and other events about this. I live technology, I love it and I wouldn’t really do another thing.

Interested in answering five questions for the OpenDNS Blog? Let us know!

Next week, SysAdmins from around the country will be heading to San Jose, Calif., for the 24th annual Large Installation System Administration conference — and so will OpenDNS!

First, OpenDNS Founder David Ulevitch will be leading a Birds-of-a-Feather session Monday night, Nov. 8 at 7 p.m. He’ll be talking about how to build, deploy and manage a global DNS service, based on our experiences doing just that. His presentation will include time for Q&A and discussion.

Immediately following the talk, we’ll be heading over as a group Gordon Biersch on 33 East San Fernando Street in San Jose (it’s a quick walk from the conference). From 8–10 p.m., enjoy drinks and appetizers — on us! This is your opportunity to meet David personally and ask any questions you have — about DNS in general, setting up OpenDNS on your network or where our next datacenter will be. Please RSVP for the happy hour so we know how many people to plan for. Looking forward to seeing you there!

Today we’re launching OpenDNS for Managed Service Providers. OpenDNS for Managed Service Providers allows MSPs of any size a co-branded version of our popular OpenDNS Enterprise service to their customers.

This service was created out of demand from two different audiences — first, we have had a large number of MSPs express interest in reselling our OpenDNS Enterprise service to their customers. Second, we have a number of businesses looking to purchase OpenDNS Enterprise but who aren’t looking to buy a large subscription (which is what our corporate sales team focuses on). As a result, we now have a fully-integrated program for MSPs and a solution for our customers looking for a smaller or more tailored offering while still getting all of the OpenDNS Enterprise features.

We hear all the time that existing appliance-based solutions are prohibitively expensive and require site visits to install and often to manage. This isn’t ideal for the MSPs or for the clients. We believe OpenDNS is now serving a critical need of IT solutions providers around the world with the advent of OpenDNS for Managed Service Providers.

As a cloud-based service with a significantly lower Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) than alternative security services, OpenDNS Enterprise helps MSPs lower overhead costs and time spent on-site at client locations, while giving their customers something they’ve been looking for — comprehensive Web content filtering, faster Internet, and phishing and Malware protection. OpenDNS Enterprise’s unique malware and botnet protection technology is unlike anything else available, providing a significant differentiator IT solutions providers can pass on to their clients.

Finally, I want to provide a big thank you to the dozens of MSPs who have been testing this with us over the last 3-4 months as we made refinements to both the dashboard interfaces and the program itself. We’re confident we have created a program that works well for all MSPs and are excited to make sure the program is a huge success.

More information about the OpenDNS for Managed Service Providers program is available here. Interested MSPs can apply to join the program today!