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.