ISP's DNS Got you down? Try This.

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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.
Peter has been active on the C# and other MS newsgroups, has had samples at gotdotnet.com (now codegallery.com) that have been downloaded over 56,000 times, and has written numerous articles for eggheadcafe.com, for which he is a co-founder, and MSDNAA sites. He has also been a technical reviewer on books from Prentice Hall, Manning and other publishers. Peter was a Microsoft MVP for 10 years. Peter was born and raised in New York City, and after a stint as a jazz musician playing contrabass with the Robert Hunt Trio, migrated to sunny Florida, where he was hired as a rookie Financial Consultant at Merrill Lynch in Orlando, specializing in Corporate Services. It was at Merrill that Peter realized computers and technology were his forte. He spent his last few years at Merrill developing real – time computerized trading and and stock charting program using advanced technical analysis indicators, some of which are his own inventions. In 1997, he moved on to architect and serve as lead developer on a number of innovative web-based and middleware solutions for the healthcare and financial services industry.

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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