This is my first blog post here at OpenDNS, though some of you may know me from answering your support emails. It is not unusual, however, for our own users to sit in the tech support seat themselves and offer help to others. Yesterday we received the following email, and I thought it was so good we should share it:

I’ve been studying abroad in the UK for three weeks and dealing with a crummy internet connection, but at least I had OpenDNS configured on my machine. This morning, the internet stopped working for everyone in the hotel… except me. It took me a bit to realize what had happened. Once I realized the Hotel’s ISP’s DNS was down, I spent the entire afternoon configuring OpenDNS on the laptops of everyone in the hotel lobby……we have to thank you for re-connecting us to the world, even across the pond!

Thanks for such an incredible service that anyone who understands networking would pay precious money for, yet you somehow provide it for free. It’s great to be immune to one of the most annoying internet problems you can have.

- Dominic

Thanks Dominic! While we are always happy to help, it is also nice when our users take the initiative to spread the word of OpenDNS and contribute positively to their community. After all, that is one of the ideas OpenDNS was founded upon.

OpenDNS user Zach Weigand just released version 1.0 of his freeware AppleScript application for keeping OpenDNS updated as dynamic IP addresses change. We’d seen the work brewing, and it’s fun to share his work with a wider audience. I know many OpenDNS users on Macs can benefit from this focused utility.

Go to http://zwei.gotdns.com/zweisoft to download the application (all of 25K) and the brief documentation. The application is also available at VersionTracker and MacUpate.com. (Looks like a few hundred downloads at each place already!)

This application will be useful after you do three things (besides, of course, using OpenDNS):

1. Create a free account.
2. Add a single IP network from the Networks tab of the OpenDNS Dashboard.
3. Check the box to enable dynamic IP updates for that network from the Settings tab.
   (Look for “Set Up a Dynamic IP” in the left-hand menu.)

Multiple dynamic IP addresses per account are supported; read more tips and information about dynamic IPs, or get clients for other platforms. Developers, we’re happy to add your app to the list.

Thanks, Zach!

(My thanks to Fabio Calvigioni (oRi0n) for translating this post into Italian, below.)

Update: Several commenters say the problem is gone, and that appears to be true. We hope it will continue. - July 23, 2007

We care about delivering a great Internet experience worldwide, and it appears that many Italians are poorly served by their current DNS infrastructure.

Several times over the last several months, Telecom Italia has blocked DNS requests from OpenDNS servers. What happens? Our customers in Italy are unable to resolve domains that uses Telecom Italia for their authoritative DNS, for example: pf.rossoalice.virgilio.it (a large Italian ISP).

For months, we’ve jumped through technical hoops to work around these blocks, even though all we’re doing is what any recursive DNS service would do: ask for the location of a domain from the respective authoritative server.

We’ve communicated through several channels: email, IRC, telephone. (We don’t speak Italian, but we’ve made an effort through translation services.)

Result? Nothing. (In DNS land, we’d call it a SERVFAIL.)

If anyone responsible and responsive at Telecom Italia wants to help us resolve this matter, we’re more than willing to work this out directly.

For all those Italian customers who have been affected now and again, we apologize. We are still trying to resolve this problem via normal channels. But we’ve been quite patient so far, and we’re a bit tired of banging our heads against this particular wall.

Here’s why we’re naming Telecom Italia.

First, dnsti.interbusiness.it and dnsts.interbusiness.it have blocked our requests.
Second, the interbusiness.it domain is owned by Telecom Italia, according to whois data.

Domain:             interbusiness.it
Status:             ACTIVE
Created:            1996-01-29 00:00:00
Last Update:        2007-01-30 00:36:13
Expire Date:        2008-01-29

Registrant
  Name:             Telecom Italia S.p.A.
  ContactID:        TELE616-ITNIC
  Address:          Via Paolo Di Dono, 44
                       Roma
                       00143
                       RM
                       IT
  Created:          2007-03-01 10:44:12
  Last Update:      2007-03-01 10:44:12

Nameservers
  dnsti.interbusiness.it
  dns.opb.interbusiness.it
  dns3.nic.it
  dnsts.interbusiness.it

I look forward to sharing a solution.

Telecom Italia non risponde ad OpenDNS

OpenDNS si impegna per fornire in tutto il mondo il miglior servizio agli utenti di Internet, ma sembra che molti italiani debbano fare i conti con un’infrastruttura DNS molto carente.

Per diverse volte negli ultimi mesi Telecom Italia ha bloccato richieste DNS dai server OpenDNS. Cosa succede quindi? Molti nostri clienti in Italia non riescono a risolvere nomi di domini che usano Telecom Italia come server DNS autoritativi. Per esempio, pf.rossoalice.virgilio.it (un importante ISP italiano) viene risolto in maniera errata.

Per mesi abbiamo utilizzato espedienti tecnici per aggirare questi blocchi, anche se tutto quello che stiamo facendo è quello che farebbe ogni servizio di DNS ricorsivo: richiedere l’indirizzo di un dominio al suo rispettivo server autoritativo.

Abbiamo provato a contattare Telecom Italia per email, IRC e telefono (non parliamo italiano ma abbiamo fatto dei tentativi utilizzando dei servizi di traduzione).

Risultato: nessuna risposta (nel campo dei DNS lo chiamiamo SERVFAIL).

Se qualche responsabile o addetto di Telecom Italia è interessato ad aiutarci a risolvere questo problema saremmo dispostissimi a collaborare direttamente in tale senso.

Chiediamo scusa a tutti i clienti italiani che hanno riscontrato e stanno ancora riscontrando questo problema. Stiamo ancora provando ad eliminare il blocco attraverso i normali canali. Fin qui siamo stati abbastanza pazienti ma ora siamo un po’ stanchi di doverci scervellare con questo problema.

Ecco perché crediamo che Telecom Italia sia la causa del problema.

Innanzitutto, dnsti.interbusiness.it e dnsts.interbusiness.it hanno bloccato le nostre richieste. Inoltre, il dominio interbusiness.it, secondo i dati del whois, appartiene a Telecom Italia.

Domain:             interbusiness.it
Status:             ACTIVE
Created:            1996-01-29 00:00:00
Last Update:        2007-01-30 00:36:13
Expire Date:        2008-01-29

Registrant
  Name:             Telecom Italia S.p.A.
  ContactID:        TELE616-ITNIC
  Address:          Via Paolo Di Dono, 44
                       Roma
                       00143
                       RM
                       IT
  Created:          2007-03-01 10:44:12
  Last Update:      2007-03-01 10:44:12

Nameservers
  dnsti.interbusiness.it
  dns.opb.interbusiness.it
  dns3.nic.it
  dnsts.interbusiness.it

Spero di aggiornarvi presto con una soluzione.

Last week, Virgin Media, a very large United Kingdom ISP, fixed a configuration which was preventing some of their customers from choosing OpenDNS.

The history: last summer, we heard from various NTL customers (Virgin Media was previously known as NTL) that OpenDNS was not an option for them to use, for unknown reasons.

My thanks to Adam Ford in the Operations team at Virgin Media for reaching out with the note below, which he kindly gave me permission to post here. Our thanks, too, to those Virgin Media customers who raised the issue.

I’m impressed by the proactive steps taken by Adam and his colleagues. Giving your customers choice is good business.

The note from Virgin Media

I work in the Operations team at Virgin Media, and we’ve been made aware of an issue regarding some of our customers using DNS services off our network — and directed to your blog. This most certainly shouldn’t be the case, so we looked and corrected a configuration issue on a core router in Cambridge.

Whilst we do currently have in place DNS caching techniques in order to speed up response times for customers, this should ONLY affect traffic to our own DNS servers. (This ‘DNS caching’ method is currently being replaced.)

The configuration error meant some (not all) customers in the Cambridge area would have been forced to use our own DNS servers (transparently redirected).

One of our customers has kindly tested this for us since we made the configuration change and confirmed it is now working as expected.

Hopefully this ends the story: we always permit use of external DNS servers on our Cable/DSL services. I’d be grateful if you could update your blog to ensure customers know the up to date information (ie, it should work fine :o) ).

On behalf of Virgin Media I really do apologise for the disruption this has caused, as it should not have happened. This type of error should be near impossible in the future as mentioned above– the current system is being replaced.

Many thanks,

Adam Ford
Principal Internet Systems Engineer
Virgin Media Engineering & Operations

The Internet is a big place and even with the best filtering you will eventually stumble upon a site you wish you could just “un-see.” Unfortunately, we can’t erase that mental picture from your mind, but we can let you help protect others from the same experience.

When you stumble across a site you think should be blocked by one of our 6 categories of adult site blocking, let us know. Head on over to the adult domain checker, enter the domain of the site, and click the “Check this site” button. If there is no match against the St. Bernard iGuard database, you will be given the opportunity to submit it for human review.

You can even consider it your good deed for the day.