ISP's DNS Got you down? Try This.

I don't know about you, but Brighthouse (Time Warner, RoadRunner, whatever you call it) has some real DNS issues here in cfl (that's "Central Florida" as in cfl.rr.com). Sometimes it just goes completely out, other times it works for some sites and not for others.

If you have a similar problem, obviously the first step is to complain to the provider. Of course, that doesn't always work. One suggestion I tried is to use the OpenDNS Service (it's free).

You can visit their welcome page here (if you aren't hooked up yet, they will guide you through it). It doesn't matter if you have a wireless router or whatever. Just update the "Preferred DNS" entries in your network connection, reboot, and you are up.

It seems to be fast and reliable. It automatically protects against known phishing sites, and it even automatically corrects your url spelling mistakes!

For a real quickie, the entries:

OPENDNS:
208.67.222.222
208.67.220.220

These people at OpenDNS are solid. They handle over a billion DNS requests daily. Take a look for yourself.

Comments

  1. Anonymous1:25 PM

    Hey Peter,

    Nice post! Just wondering what happened to the old "Goodbye job" post.

    -Jon

    PS: I've heard of Verizon DSL and Comcast having similar issues (including Verizon sometimes losing the internet).

    ReplyDelete

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