OpenDNS.com has been redesigned to make resources more readily-available, and offer more insight into why OpenDNS is the best way to secure your network from threats at the DNS layer.

Let’s go for a quick tour:

• The Technology section is brand new. Here we dive into how OpenDNS works, including details about our sophisticated Anycast routing technology and globally-distributed network. We also show you why OpenDNS is so fast and so reliable, and how our service has been designed from the ground up to ensure 100% uptime. The new section includes an interactive network map that tells you which of our 12 global datacenters is answering your DNS requests and stats about total DNS requests — per day and even per second.

• We made the Business Solutions and Home Solutions more obvious in order to get people to the information they need faster. Whether you’re a SysAdmin looking for information about how our malware protection works, a mom or dad looking for a straightforward way to keep kids safe online, or just want to sign up for Premium DNS, the new site is tailored to ensure your questions get answered in fewer clicks.

• The Resources section is a great place to find out who is using OpenDNS and how. Browse the customer showcase and get to know the trusted brands that rely on OpenDNS every day, meet our partners or find out why companies like yours are using OpenDNS. This section is jam-packed with case studies, data sheets and even an FAQ.

It’s a story we’ve heard time and again. Public school budgets are smaller than ever, and the funds devoted to improving technology (and security) get cut in half, and then cut in half again. Network administrators at schools are forced to piece together legacy hardware and out-of-date software with some clever work-arounds in order to keep kids protected from malware, phishing and unsafe content.

Unfortunately, this often results in security loopholes and inconsistent filtering policies for kids (who are usually tech smart enough to figure out how to get around them) and a whole heck of a lot of work for network administrators.

OpenDNS is changing all that. With OpenDNS, schools can can turn filtering and malware protection into cost-savings initiatives instead of cost centers, and they can ensure that protection is universal across an unlimited number of locations. And this isn’t just speculation on our part – we shared a new milestone this morning that proves it’s reality. We announced that 90 percent of public K-12 schools in Maine are using OpenDNS. For us, it’s a huge honor and privilege to be given the responsibility of protecting nearly every kid in Maine. But for the state of Maine, it’s a lot more.

We tip our hat to Maine for being on the cutting-edge of technological innovation, lifting the burden of appliance management and limiting the dangers of security loopholes. And we send a very big congratulations to the team at Networkmaine, the organization that operates and maintains all network infrastructure for Maine’s K-12 schools and libraries, who identified that using OpenDNS would not only allow the state of Maine to significantly improve the security it uses to protect kids, but that universal deployment would put them at the forefront of keeping kids safe online.

Last year we announced that 1 in 3 public K-12 schools in the U.S. were using OpenDNS, and although we celebrated the milestone, we went to work right away to make OpenDNS the choice of all schools. We added the academic fraud category for content filtering and created the K-12 forums in our community section. And we’re not done yet. If you have ideas for how to make OpenDNS better for schools, tell us what you need. David and our engineers are closely monitoring the IdeaBank, where you can share suggestions for product improvements, and we’re always listening at Success@OpenDNS.com.

Nope, that’s not a typo in the headline, we had our best week ever, for the last two weeks running. It’s a great pleasure to run a company that has grown consistently since its inception five years ago. Being able to watch important metrics climb up and to the right is a joy not all companies are afforded, and we don’t take this success for granted. We’re focused on innovation and improving the status quo when it comes to DNS and security — we owe it to each of you.

In our kitchen we have a KPI (key performance indicators) dashboard that every employee at OpenDNS can see. It covers an array of important metrics that provide critical insight into the health of our business even including our day to day financials. I’ve always run OpenDNS with a keen focus on numbers and I believe we can run the best company by sharing the numbers widely. Being able to see the numbers causes everyone to think about their contribution to the metrics that matter and how they can have a positive impact on the company (less support requests, improved performance, better traffic engineering, etc.) I believe looking at the numbers can guide a business unfailingly — Numbers don’t lie (though their interpretation is often a good fodder for debate!).

Today I’m delighted to report some exceptional numbers. OpenDNS has recorded its two biggest weeks on record. We are now regularly handing over 32 billion requests per day during the week (some of you seem to take a break on weekends). Best of all we’ve done this with zero downtime, as we’ve never had downtime in our entire company history.

I believe in our mission unwaveringly of making the Internet safer, faster and more reliable. And I can’t thank our users enough for their support of that mission. Also can’t wait to share more the cool stuff we’re cooking up.

PS — Some of you have already asked me about what we’re using for our KPI dashboard. We built it ourselves and I’m going to suggest the engineer who created it write a post about how it works.

Five years of OpenDNS. We’ve come so far and have much to be thankful for.

In 2005, before launching OpenDNS, I went to talk with some of the leading DNS experts to get feedback — and the feedback I received was consistent. They didn’t think what I wanted to do was even possible, and if it was possible, they didn’t think anybody would want it. Smart guys, but wrong on both counts.

Today, we are the largest DNS service in the world with more than 30,000,000 users. 30,000,000! And we’ve never had a global outage. If we were an ISP, we’d be one of the largest in the world.

We compete against Google, which launched a service following ours in 2009. And we’re winning. We compete against Symantec, a $14 billion dollar company that has watched us build market-share with consumer and enterprise customers who prefer OpenDNS as a security solution. And we make the Internet safer, faster and more reliable for more than 1% of the world’s Internet users.

We’ve done this with your help, your feedback, your evangelism, and your encouragement. And that’s why we thank you, and make sure to put you first with everything we do.

Some Major Milestones:

• In July 2006, we opened our doors and let in the first packets, within a month, we handled a total of over 1 billion DNS queries. Today we handle over 30 billion a day.
• In April of 2009, not quite 3 years after our launch, we handled 10 billion queries in a single day. We are supersonic at this point!
• In the summer of 2009 — skipping our vacation — we pushed our mission of a safer, faster Internet for everyone forward with our good friends at NETGEAR to deliver Live Parental Controls and OpenDNS across millions of households.
• 2009 ended with the launch of OpenDNS Enterprise, our service to deliver a safer Internet to businesses small and large around the world. Today we have some of the largest companies in the world on our enterprise platform.
• In June of 2010 we discovered that 1 out of 3 public schools in the US was using OpenDNS to provide a safer and faster Internet to students across America. Today, we see over 40,000 schools around the world!
• July 2011 welcomes our fifth birthday and our announcement that we now have more than 30,000,000 people using OpenDNS every day. And based on our numbers, the countdown to 40,000,000 isn’t far away.

The Road Ahead

We’re a startup and we move fast. It’s easy to lose sight of the big picture when you’re heads-down, focused on an immediate product launch or set of features. In order to make sure we stay on course, we have a few perspectives shaping the decisions we make.

• Speed and reliability matter more than ever. The number of people connected to the Internet around the world continues to grow at an astounding rate and the desire to access content quickly, safely and securely has only increased.
• We look at the major security companies like Symantec, Websense, Blue Coat and others and see major gaps in their offerings and we think there is a better way to secure the myriad devices connecting to our customers’ networks.
• We know that despite tons of various malware solutions in the market, they all stink for one reason or another.
• We know that people care about privacy, but if you ask 100 people to explain what privacy means you will get 100 different answers.
• We know there are a lot of different devices connecting to the Internet now and having custom software deployed for each version of Android, iOS, Windows or Mac is unmanageable.
• We believe in defense in depth as the only sound security strategy and we want to help our customers practice it. We are sympathetic to the CIO who doesn’t want ten different security solutions on his or her network, but history has shown that the magical security appliance that does everything will let you down every time.

Thank You

OpenDNS is poised for even more stratospheric growth in the next five years. As a company, we are becoming more mature in our thinking, and our goals continue to expand. With each hill we climb, the horizon of our potential positive impact continues to broaden.

As an engineering-driven company, we’re lucky to have assembled such an amazing engineering organization that delivers our non-stop service. We have consistently recruited amazing people, and managed to raise the already-high bar with every new hire.

I speak for everyone on the team here when I say: Thank you for using OpenDNS!

PS, we’re running an amazing infographic of OpenDNS statistics on our homepage for a couple days, but here’s a link to it in case you miss it.

We just hit a big milestone at OpenDNS and I wanted to share it with you. Today OpenDNS successfully resolved the most DNS requests we’ve ever handled in a single day – 30 billion DNS requests!

We recently brought a Singapore datacenter online to handle traffic from Asia, and we’re in the final stages of setting up a new European datacenter in Frankfurt as well. As we continue to grow, resolving billions more DNS requests per day, we’ll add new server locations to meet demand and ensure the OpenDNS service is the ultra-reliable DNS service you’ve come to depend on.

In addition to thanking our wonderful customers, I want to give a special thanks to our elite operations team that runs our global infrastructure. This team of four (yes, four) exceptionally talented individuals manages an infrastructure that covers over a dozen datacenters with hundreds of servers, peers and interconnects – 24×7, 365 days a year. Speaking of which, we’re growing the operations group, and just about every other department at OpenDNS, so if you are looking for a fun and challenging work environment, join the team!

Back in September I announced that OpenDNS had been selected as a World Economic Forum (WEF) Technology Pioneer for 2011. This is one of the greatest honors our company has ever received, second only to the recommendations our customers give to their friends and colleagues in spreading the word about OpenDNS.

As a part of the honor, I was invited to Davos, Switzerland last week to participate in the amazing WEF 2011 Annual Meeting. The roughly 1,200 attendees included dozens of heads of state, excellencies, titans of industry, and many worldly luminaries. It was in Davos that I was able to hear Kofi Annan speak about Africa, shake former President Bill Clinton’s hand, have breakfast with Bill Gates and meet many of the leading CEOs in the tech world. It was amazing to participate in discussions on how we will solve the world’s many problems alongside some of the most impressive, powerful, and accomplished individuals on the planet.

I wanted to share some highlights from the week with all of you to give you a sense of the amazing environment that I was allowed to be a part of, and hopefully give you all a strong appreciation for how this will help OpenDNS grow to be an even better service for you and a driving force for innovation over this new decade and beyond.

The entrance to the main hall of the Congress Center where the event is held in Davos, Switzerland

Lots of personal security, drivers in armored cars, and more waiting to get in each morning!

Me (wearing a backpack) waiting to shake Bill Clinton’s hand.

Listening to the President of the Russian Federation, Dmitry Medvedev, talk about protecting communications online and support investments in science and technology.

At breakfast with Bill Gates. Listening to him speak was inspiring and encouraging.

The surge protectors at the World Economic Forum allow plugs from over 30 countries to be inserted. Talk about supporting diverse power requirements!

It wasn’t all meetings, I did get to ski one of the days in the gorgeous Swiss alps. This is at the top of Parsenn, one of the largest mountains to ski on near Davos.

I even got to see some tech-celebs, including the wonderful Robert Scoble.

UPDATE: And the winning haiku is:

Click malicious link?
OpenDNS says, “No.”
Surf on friends! Surf on.

-Christopher Manar

Two runners up:

208
67222
222

-David Desmond

The morning is slow
OpenDNS is fast
A world on my desk

-Commenter PatMa33

Thanks to everyone for their submissions. We’ll be in touch with the winners shortly!

***

What a 2010 it’s been! We’ve announced that more than 1 percent of the world’s Internet is using OpenDNS, discovered that 1 out of 3 schools in the U.S. is using our service, launched FamilyShield, celebrated our fourth birthday, been featured in the NYT, logged our biggest week of growth ever, were named a World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer, introduced OpenDNS for Managed Service Providers and opened up our new Singapore datacenter. And there are still three weeks in the year left!

It’s difficult to sum up everything that’s happened this year, but we want you to give it a shot — in 17 syllables. Your challenge, should you choose to accept it: Describe OpenDNS in 2010 with a traditional haiku. You can read more about what makes a haiku a haiku here, but essentially it’s a three-line poem with the first line having five syllables, second having seven and third having five as well.

To enter, post your haiku in the comments below or on our Facebook page. The writer of the winning submission will receive an a free year of OpenDNS Deluxe, and an OpenDNS gift pack, complete with a bottle opener, stickers and funny holiday card. Two runners up will also receive prizes.

May the best haiku win!

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.