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DNS OpenDNS Security

OpenDNS: Your first line of defense for your Family on the Internet

This morning I was going through my home network configuration due to power outages caused by the storms that just rolled through. I noticed that my one of my wireless networks was using a weird configuration for DNS.

DNS (Domain Naming System) is one of the key services that allow you to access the internet. You see every website or service that you go to online uses a nickname to allow you to get to it easily. It’s like me saying meet me at Ken’s house, do you know where that is or how to get there? No, the same thing happens when you tell your favorite web browser that you want to go to Youtube.com, Amazon.com, or hulu.com. The first time you ask to go to one of those sites your computer has no idea how to get there, but it has something called a DNS server to ask for direction. Long story short, without DNS, getting to your favorite website or service would be very difficult if not impossible!!

Thankfully we don’t need to picture a world without DNS, but we should be worried about a few other things around DNS. For instance, your ISP (Internet Service Provider) which would be Comcast, Verizon, AT&T and others, provide you with a DNS Server to use. Even some wireless routers that you may have purchased have them pre-configured as well. Which is Great! Except for the fact that the servers that they have you pointing to are slow and old and can really slow down your Internet Connection.

You may be asking, “What can I do about this?”

Enter OpenDNS. OpenDNS is a Free (for home users) DNS Server that you can point to which will offer better performance than using your IP’s DNS Server. It doesn’t require you to sign up or give them a credit card. You can just go to their website and follow their setup guides.

You might now be asking, “Well this is great, but what about defending my family?”

Well I am glad you asked, OpenDNS is already configured out of the box to block access to Adult content and other things that you might not want your family to have access to. You also have the option to create an account with OpenDNS which will allow you to see all of the things your family is doing on your network. It also allows you to set the level of restriction on your home network

“How can I configure this to work?”

Well you can either configure every device in your house to do it manually, which lets be honest is a pain, or you can configure it one time on your internet gateway and be done with it.

If you have questions or are interested in getting something like this setup for your home/business (yes there is a business option available as well) feel free to reach out to me via our Contact Us form.