DNS or Domain Name Service is something that when it works you never think about it and when it doesn’t can be EXTREMELY frustrating. I’ve found a great FREE service that gives you MORE for nothing than your ISP does when it comes to DNS.

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For those who don’t know DNS is the method by which the domain name (such as thehelpcenters.com) is turned into an IP address. There’s a bunch of things that happen and work with this but overall it’s fast and painless when working properly.

OpenDNS takes this a bit further. The standard DNS service is there and works with all computers but with more pizzaz.

  • Redundancy multiple servers that cache and serve DNS often much faster than your ISP can.
  • Auto Correction – Mistype a domain like thehelpcenters.co it will fix it to be thehelpcenters.com
  • Shortcuts – Goto a website often but don’t want to type in thisisareallylongdomainname.com? Shorten it to ldn or something else easy to remember.
  • Filtering- Filter out bad websites.
    • Adult Site Blocking – They keep and updated list.
    • Phishing and Scam Sites – They maintain a list
    • Block Proxy Sites
    • Custom Blocks – Add sites you want blocked
    • Whitelist sites you NEVER want to be blocked
  • Reports – See where traffic is going.
  • OpenDNS Guide – When a site is down instead of the generic error page OpenDNS will show you a page of relevant data and other sites related.

To use OpenDNS simply set your DNS to be 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220. You can do this on your computer, router or if you have DNS servers on there. They provide instructions on how to do this for many computers and operating systems including Windows, OSX, Linux, and even the Nintento Wii.

You may ask how they can do this for free? There has to be a catch. And yes there is. When you mistype a domain OR get a bad server and they show the OpenDNS Guide they also show advertisements (clearly indicated).

So for just about 10 minutes of your time you can speed up your browsing, filter internet sites, protect yourself from phishing sites and a whole lot more with OpenDNS.