How do you understand big numbers?

OpenDNS does ~3 billion DNS requests daily, with around 450 billion all-time so far. Big numbers, but tough to comprehend.

Recently, we changed the stats number at the top of every page of our website from the all-time number to requests/per second. This number moves around, but recently has swung between 37,000 – 41,000 requests per second.

OK… sounds impressive, but again, what should you compare the number to?

How about the volume of transactions on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE)?

Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal ran “After Crash, NYSE Got the Message(s)” on the front page of the Money & Investing section (C1 in print).

In reading the article (in case it’s not available when you click… WSJ.com requires payment at some point), we learn:

On Feb. 27, 2007, messages flowed in at a rate of 15,000 per second. The exchange quickly thereafter doubled its capacity to 38,000 messages a second. As markets fell in August when credit markets seized up, the NYSE was getting as many as 28,000 messages per second. This time, systems held up without a major hitch, but the volume of messages prompted [NYSE CEO]Mr. Thain to call for an increase in capacity to 64,000 by year’s end. [Emphasis added]

So, even at its top volume in August, the NYSE volume of messages wasn’t matching the volume of DNS requests our customers make each day. And its capacity currently falls short of ours.

Maybe I’m comparing apples and oranges, but we like to think that your DNS requests are as important (almost?!) as those buy-sell messages.

OpenDNS has plenty of headroom, and we’re adding more to support our growing customer base… and to stay ahead of the NYSE!

BroadbandReports.com tells us Comcast’s DNS servers had a rough weekend. According to reports from Comcast customers, instead of being able to surf freely they were confronted with this page when they attempted to visit any Web site:

It’s not clear if the problem continues today, but one thing is certain: OpenDNS fixed the problem.

Welcome to OpenDNS, Comcast customers!

We’ve gotten a couple emails about trouble resolving .org domains today. There’s nothing wrong on our end but it looks like .org has been having a rough day.

Here’s a picture for you network nerds out there…

(key: more red == more bad)

As a reminder, you can always use CacheCheck to try it again. And seriously, what other DNS provider gives you this kind of control?

We added two usability improvements to OpenDNS CacheCheck today.

1. When you refresh the cache for a domain, CacheCheck now automatically refreshes the records for that domain’s zone. For example, if you refresh www.opendns.com, CacheCheck also refreshes opendns.com.

2. This new bookmarklet makes it easier to check a domain. It grabs the hostname of the website you’re viewing and adds it to the CacheCheck form, replacing the need to add the domain manually. Just drag this link to your bookmarks toolbar: OpenDNS CacheCheck.

Screenshot of the CacheCheck bookmarklet:

OpenDNS’s typo correction feature helps smooth one of the Internet’s daily annoyances. But for URIBLs (a kind of blacklist used by mail servers), typo correction has always been a deal breaker.

No longer!

Back in August 2006, we enhanced our nameserver software to stop doing typo correction for DNSBLs. Now, URIBLs can get the same special treatment. In fact, the popular URIBLs hosted at these three domains already do:

• surbl.org
• uribl.com
• uribl.org

If you previously disabled typo correction so you could use one of these URIBLs, you can now re-enable it.

And if you run a URIBL and would like us to add your domain to our URIBL list, please provide us with details either in the comments here or via our contact form. We’ll keep the latest list in our knowledge base.

By the way, our thanks go to the folks at SURBL and URIBL.COM for their assistance with this project.

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).

There’s an opportunity for software developers of Dynamic DNS clients. We’d like to help promote your software, as soon as it meets these two requirements:

• Support Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) for HTTPS updates
• Allow the user to change the Dynamic DNS update URL to the OpenDNS update URL

If your software supports those two requirements, we’re quite happy to list it as an option for OpenDNS customers and help you get more users for your software, whether it’s commercial, freeware, or anywhere in between.

Background

With last week’s introduction of OpenDNS Accounts, OpenDNS supports DNS preferences and statistics for users with dynamic IP addresses through Dynamic DNS. There are many, many individuals with dynamic IP addresses, so we know this step opens up our service dramatically.

Dynamic DNS (DDNS) requires running client software on your computer, as described in the DDNS instructions. Right now, OpenDNS offers working client software that’s only for the technically savvy. The software is a modification of the open-source command line client inadyn by OpenDNS to support Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), if you’re curious.

We’re not client software developers. The only reason we released anything was because the clients we found either did not support SSL or would not let you (the customer) change the DDNS update URL to the OpenDNS update URL, as listed on the OpenDNS DDNS instructions page.

The good news? There is already a vibrant ecosystem of DDNS client software. However, we didn’t find anything that met both of our requirements just yet. The closest one was DynSite, a Windows client which supports SSL, but doesn’t support OpenDNS’s update URL.

If we missed a working candidate, let us know!

Next steps

If you’re a developer of DDNS client software, please get in touch. We’d like to help or answer questions as best we can.

If you’re already using DDNS client software and would like to use the same software for managing your OpenDNS Account (makes sense to me!), then please ask the developer (politely) if adding SSL support and OpenDNS update URL support (or just allowing update URL choice) is on their radar.

Reminder

You can use OpenDNS without an account if speedy, reliable DNS with the default preferences is what you need.

See the new tab up there, at the far right? It says My Account. Go ahead and take a look. Or read on for why you’ll want to create a free account. You can find the tab and Sign In link at the upper right of every page of the OpenDNS website.

OpenDNS invited the public to use its free, reliable DNS service for the first time on July 10, 2006. Less than a week later, we introduced preferences for OpenDNS, which gave the individual user the opportunity to manage their DNS in a way that had never before been possible. Later, at customer request, we used our platform to offer choice in their response to Cameroon’s TLD policies.

OpenDNS Accounts represents the next step in our commitment to give our customers choice and control.

We talk a lot about “Safer, Faster and Smarter” DNS built on a rock-solid and reliable foundation. A big part of being safer and smarter means giving you control. That’s what OpenDNS Accounts is all about.

When was the last time your DNS improved?

It doesn’t matter if you have one IP at home that you manage or a massive network of disconnected offices — OpenDNS Accounts is for you.

Secure
Registration, sign in, and all profile and preferences are managed with a username and password on a secure, encrypted site using SSL (like your bank does).

Dynamic DNS Support
OpenDNS Accounts support the use of dynamic DNS (DDNS) update mechanisms to allow you to securely manage your Account and get your preferences even with a dynamic IP address. Read for details. Note: Because OpenDNS uses SSL, there are several very good DDNS clients which do not (yet) work. We are going to encourage various developers to add support for SSL to their otherwise very strong DDNS software.

Statistics
Everyone from individuals to network operators will enjoy a bit of insight into statistics about their DNS usage. How many DNS requests per day do you make? How many individual domains per day do you resolve? On that pretty graph I see for the OpenDNS service, what am I contributing? Basically, we’re taking the stats we show the public and giving you similar insight with the stats that relate to your DNS traffic.

Just as a heads up — while DNS resolution is blinding fast (as always), our stats processing happens (as our network guys say) out-of-band and is done separately. You will not see statistics immediately (at least, not just yet). It may take as long as 48 hours for your stats to appear.

We feel strongly that this is a platform for DNS unlike anything that has ever existed before and continues to help OpenDNS bring about evolutionary changes to the DNS that dramatically change the end-user experience.

P.S. If you have OpenDNS preferences, they will continue to work until they are superseded by an OpenDNS Account with the same IP address. We suggest that anyone using OpenDNS preferences set up a free account now and verify your IP address.