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OpenDNS is a great idea, well-executed. They took something basic and ubiquitous, DNS, and improved it by adding spell-checking and phishing protection (usability enhancements). They provide the service for free in exchange for monetizing typo search pages. The typo search pages are simple, fast, and generally useful. What I was looking for is usually the first result. There is no software to install, just two settings to change, and they provide a registration-free way to set preferences on their site. John Roberts is a friend from my CNET days and gave me a preview a few days before they launched, I've been using it full-time ever since and it has been invisible in all the right ways. (37)
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drmike | July 18th, 2006 @ 12:41 pm | Reply
Gotta disagree. What’s to stop them from calling wordpress.org a typo and loading sixapart.com? Or, using an example from one of my old domains, theapparatus.com (A heavy metal German band and a domain I used to own before an ICANN review) vs theapparatus.net (my old hosting company and the domain I wound up with) and calling it a typo fix. No disrespect meant towards Mr Roberts of course as I do understand what they’re trying to do but seems like I would be putting a whole lot of trust in a company and precedures I know little about.
*chuckle* I wonder what they would do with tdjc.be/net/info. Would they send me over to the Texas Department of Justice and Corrections? I get tons of hits for it on my sites.
Jonathan | July 18th, 2006 @ 1:07 pm | Reply
Woah! This thing’s flying now! Great find, Matt!
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David Ulevitch | July 18th, 2006 @ 3:32 pm | Reply
drmike,
Good question: What’s to stop them from calling wordpress.org a typo and loading sixapart.com?
Two things will stop that.
1) On a business level, the simple answer is because “you would stop using us.” Keeping you happy keeps us happy.
2) We let you enable or disable features. Want phishing protection but not typo protection? Go ahead and set that up here: http://www.opendns.com/prefs/ One of the big things we’re trying to do is change DNS from being a firehose that people are forced to keep open and in its place put something that allows you to manage the DNS on your network, computer, access point, etc.
On top of that, we focus on DNS. It’s what I’ve been doing for years. My goal is make it as reliable and awesome for you as possible. Some of you know me from http://www.everydns.net/ which people use to manage your their domain names already.
Thanks!
Richard | July 18th, 2006 @ 3:53 pm | Reply
“What’s to stop them from calling wordpress.org a typo and loading sixapart.com?”
Easy: people would stop using their service if they did that, since it would take approximately 30 seconds to change their settings back, and they’d go out of business. That’s what stops them.
Richard | July 18th, 2006 @ 6:01 pm | Reply
Or what David said.
Lloyd D Budd | July 18th, 2006 @ 7:00 pm | Reply
This is a very geeky, US only solution. The key to their success will be a solution that hosting providers are interesting in deploying.
With Firefox or Flock, typing words in the address bar and the implicit Google’s â€"I’m feeling lucky†will get you good results often with less typing than OpenDNS’s tyop correct. The phishing feature is novel but also coming in Firefox 2.0 . Maintaining phishing lists can be expensive if you don’t have access to the kind of data that Google has.
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David Ulevitch | July 19th, 2006 @ 2:32 am | Reply
Lloyd,
What makes you think Google has good data?
Last I checked they were asking me for data. Just a point of reference.
-David
Jason | July 19th, 2006 @ 6:51 am | Reply
DrMike:
So far as I would understand it, the typo killer only happens when a domain fails to resolve.
Active domain results are returned, PERIOD.
Note though, I haven’t tried it out, so I don’t know.
I look forward to starting it soon, however.
Jordan | July 19th, 2006 @ 9:01 am | Reply
Great post, Matt. I’ve been hearing about OpenDNS but never really bothered to find out what it really does. Thanks for the super-short summary (it sold me–I’m using OpenDNS right now :)).
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Hoover | July 19th, 2006 @ 9:49 am | Reply
A preliminary test didn’t show any improvement in speed at all… sorry to say it was slower for most pages. However, on a second machine there was slight improvement, but not enough to do the Snoopy Happy Dance. I will have to set up some production machines with the DNS to really give it a workout.
Nice idea, I hope it works well in long run. I’d use it often if it does.
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William Tan | July 19th, 2006 @ 11:10 am | Reply
I posted some technical points on my blog.
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Lloyd D Budd | July 19th, 2006 @ 12:54 pm | Reply
I meant to write “The key to their success will be a solution that *ISP* are interesting in deploying.” Been dealing with my own hosting issues.
Hi David,
I don’t think that because Google asks you that they don’t have good data. My experience in my short time that I chose to work in this area for an established malware desktop client — didn’t appeal to me — was the more data you have the better. It is a very stressful area both when positives are missed and false positives are made. Google has multiple avenues of good data:
* web spidering
* email
* ISP
I think you have a good opportunity in a short term niche, and the opportunity to make it much more.
All the best,
Lloyd
Eleventeen | July 20th, 2006 @ 7:45 am | Reply
I love how folks are rating DNS reply times as browser rendering speeds.
Guys: switching to a new DNS server is only going to speed up *how long it takes for your computer to look up the IP address of a site.* And thats only on a) the first time you go to a site, or b) going back to a site that you haven’t been to in a while and so is not still in your local cache.
DNS servers won’t ’speed up’ the way your browser renders a page, the most they’ll do is speed up how long your machine takes to find a page. And that’s only on a new site. The rest of the time (say, going to google.com) your machine is getting the IP from it’s local cache. You only notice a slow DNS server when you go to a page you’ve never been to, or haven’t been to in a while, and it can’t find the page for a few seconds or times out before it resolves the IP.
The truly useful features of OpenDNS are the features mentioned above: phishing protection and typo correction. I love how google.cm resolves to google.com now (a common typo with my fists of ham.)
Claude Gelinas | July 20th, 2006 @ 12:46 pm | Reply
What if a user, with OpenDNS installed, types in “business.co” and presses enter.
Will OpenDNS resolve to “business.com” or “business.co.uk”?
How does OpenDNS correctly figure when the user wants to go, in such situations?
Mark Jaquith | July 21st, 2006 @ 3:51 am | Reply
Matt, your server was down a few minutes ago. This is the screen I got. This seems a bit fishy to me. I don’t think they should be saying that your domain doesn’t exist when it’s merely not responding.
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tndal | August 26th, 2006 @ 2:59 pm | Reply
How does OpenDNS fit into the OpenNIC scheme? Is OpenDNS part of OpenNIC (I don’t think so)?
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Eric | February 17th, 2007 @ 2:14 pm | Reply
I do like the theory that goes behind OpenDNS. I believe it is a great idea for anyone that uses the internet and wants to avoid all kinds of phishing scams. My issue is that what if someone edits the DNS entries in OpenDNS and changes something like scottrade and etrade to phishing sites. Without some assurance from a 3rd party security firm, i dunno if i can trust using it for private secure transactions.
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