A month ago we gave you a sneak peek at the newest members of the OpenDNS family – OpenDNS Deluxe and OpenDNS Enterprise. Feedback since then has been phenomenal and so many of you are interested in the new, more feature-rich services.

We’re hosting a webinar next week on Wednesday, October 21 at 10 am PST to give you all of the details about what the new services will include. OpenDNS Founder David Ulevitch will host with a special guest from Nvidia, one of the first companies to deploy OpenDNS Enterprise. In the webinar we’ll:

• Go feature-by-feature over the new services.
• Give you a snapshot of the main differences between the new services and the free service you use and love today.

We know you’re busy, so like all of our webinars, we’ll keep this one to just 30 minutes.

Sign up here.

Today is a big day for OpenDNS. I’m thrilled to tell you we’ve listened to your feedback and are giving you what you want: two new versions of OpenDNS designed to meet the unique needs of professional users and businesses of all sizes.

OpenDNS has had tremendous success in our quest to improve the Internet since we launched the service three years ago — To make it safer, faster, smarter and more reliable. Our users come from all over the world and reflect a diverse set of people. Our users have homes with children, they’re some of the country’s largest school districts - Baltimore and Detroit public school systems to name a few - and they’re businesses of all sizes, from mom and pop shops to some of the world’s most trusted, global brands.

On the consumer front, we are seeing more and more users start using our service through our fantastic partners like NETGEAR and we’ve also just released a new OpenDNS Dynamic Updater client to help make it easier to ensure you are using OpenDNS at all times.

But there are some features that businesses need that aren’t included in the classic version of OpenDNS you are using today. And that’s where OpenDNS Deluxe and OpenDNS Enterprise come in. The new services have features that are tailored for both a savvier “prosumer” customer as well as larger businesses. They include a wide variety of customizations and new features that help us better integrate into more complex networks and organizations. And, they come with one of our most requested “features,” the option to easily remove the advertisements (and wildcard NXDOMAIN) from the OpenDNS experience. An option that fits in with our goal of providing people the best DNS experience possible, however they choose to configure and experience it.

Here at OpenDNS headquarters in San Francisco the entire engineering team is working in some capacity on making these services great, while working on making our classic service even better. In fact, we’ve built out even more infrastructure and more capacity, something that will benefit everyone using OpenDNS as a whole.

Today, we have 25 customers currently using our new services in Early Access, and the services will be Generally Available to anyone later this year.

I personally invite anyone who’s interested in the new service to apply for Early Access by filling out a form we’ve put online here.

Feedback welcomed in the comments, as always.

Two weeks ago I was in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, doing an installation and am happy to report that as of today, that site is online and serving production OpenDNS traffic.

One of the neat things about OpenDNS is that we use something called Anycast technology in how we run our network. That’s great for you — it means no matter where you are in the world, your DNS requests route through our closest datacenter. When we do maintenance, 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 go to it.

And here’s a photo of what our installation looks like:

From top to bottom we have:

• Operations machine for management
• Juniper MX480 Router
• Cisco 2950 Switch for management
• 3 SuperMicro Twin2U Servers (each with four servers in a single chassis)

This is a fairly typical setup for us. We have lots of room to add more servers as needed (though we think the 12 we have will be plenty for quite a while). We’re happy to answer questions, so please feel free to ask ‘em. You can see more pics of our setup here: OpenDNS in Amsterdam

More than 25,000 schools and school districts are using OpenDNS today — including some of the country’s largest — to achieve CIPA compliance, make their networks better performing, save money and keep their kids safe online. We spend a lot of time talking to these customers and often hear questions about how other school districts are using our service. What are they filtering? How did they configure the service? We came to realize that not only is there not a place online for K-12 network admins to talk to each other about OpenDNS, there’s not really a place online for K-12 networks admins to talk to each other, period.

Aiming to provide that place, today we launched the OpenDNS K-12 School forums.

If you’re a network admin for a K-12 school, take a few minutes and check it out. Have a question about using OpenDNS in your state? Curious how your peers at other school districts are using OpenDNS? The new forums are for you. Since each state has its own unique network configurations (some of you get Internet connectivity from a state-run ISP, for example) we created a section for all 50. At very least, drop by to introduce yourself to your peers and say hello.

And if your state doesn’t yet have a moderator, drop us a line and tell us why you’d make a great one.

With more than 25,000 schools and school districts using OpenDNS today (including some of the U.S.’s largest districts), our service has fast become the standard among K-12 schools. Attend our 30 minute webinar this Thursday and learn why.

We’re thrilled to have Gavin Guynes join OpenDNS founder David Ulevitch as co-host. Gavin, a longtime OpenDNS user who runs the network for Mississippi’s Madison County Schools, will tell you all about how he set up OpenDNS quickly and easily and share the many benefits Madison has gained from making the switch. You’ll learn about how the free service can help you achieve CIPA compliance, save your district lots of money and keep your students and staff safe online.

We know you’re busy, so we’ll keep the webinar short and informative - just 30 minutes. When you sign up you’ll be prompted to invite colleagues, so help us spread the word!

“ABCs of OpenDNS for K-12 Schools in the 2009-2010 Year”
Thursday, August 20, 2009
10 AM PDT - 10:30 AM PDT
Register here