Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

If this is your first visit, be sure to check out the FAQ by clicking the link above. You may have to register before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages, select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

You are here: MacNN Forums > Enthusiast Zone > Networking > Open DNS

Open DNS
Thread Tools
Noonster
Dedicated MacNNer
Join Date: Nov 2004
Location: England, UK
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Feb 3, 2008, 11:53 AM
 
Does anyone else use this??

- OpenDNS | Providing A Safer And Faster Internet

My MSN (through Adium on OS X) stopped working and was told to use open DNS so I did and now its working fine. Just wondered if anyone else is using it?

Had t enter the DNS IP's in the network settings on the Mac, but all working now... not sure if I am using these DNS IP's for all traffic now or just when the default ones set the router don't work - any ideas?

Darren
MacBook • 13.3" MacBook Aluminum Unibody, 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo, 2GB, 250GB
iMac G5 • 20" iMac G5, 1.8GHz, 1GB, 160GB, SD, AP, BT/KB/MS
iPod Mini • Silver, 4GB
iPhone 3G • Black, 16GB
     
legacyb4
Mac Elite
Join Date: May 2001
Location: Vancouver
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Feb 3, 2008, 12:03 PM
 
Yup, have been for quite a while.

If you have it set on your local Mac, then it's only for DNS lookups from your Mac; otherwise, your router will pass it on to all DHCP clients on your network.
Macbook (Black) C2D/250GB/3GB | G5/1.6 250GBx2/2.0GB
Free Mobile Ringtone & Games Uploader | Flickr | Twitter
     
zerock
Dedicated MacNNer
Join Date: Aug 2004
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Feb 3, 2008, 12:21 PM
 
its better than most
     
iMan G5
Junior Member
Join Date: Oct 2007
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Feb 3, 2008, 12:24 PM
 
I use it.
iMac G5 1.9Ghz 2.5GB RAM 160 GB HD 17" widescreen + external regular 17
     
besson3c
Clinically Insane
Join Date: Mar 2001
Location: yes
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Feb 3, 2008, 12:50 PM
 
Does OpenDNS do any of the secure DNS/dnssec stuff?

http://www.dnssec.net/

The argument is that without this form of security, it is easy to poison a DNS cache and redirect requests elsewhere. The problem with this is that it is computationally expensive though, as it is for all encryption technology.
     
Cold Warrior
Moderator
Join Date: Jan 2001
Location: Polwaristan
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Feb 3, 2008, 12:56 PM
 
I've been using OpenDNS for about 18 months now and love it. It's very fast, and I like the additional layer of security against mistyped domains and malicious sites. Mainly the speedy lookups though.

I input its servers on my home router and in each individual computer.
     
Noonster  (op)
Dedicated MacNNer
Join Date: Nov 2004
Location: England, UK
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Feb 3, 2008, 02:09 PM
 
Tried putting it in the router only and not on the mac but that did not fix the Adium MSN problem... this was only sorted when it was input on the Mac - what would be the reason for this??

Also what are the advantages of using Open DNS to just leaving it set as default (your ISP's)?

Thanks
MacBook • 13.3" MacBook Aluminum Unibody, 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo, 2GB, 250GB
iMac G5 • 20" iMac G5, 1.8GHz, 1GB, 160GB, SD, AP, BT/KB/MS
iPod Mini • Silver, 4GB
iPhone 3G • Black, 16GB
     
besson3c
Clinically Insane
Join Date: Mar 2001
Location: yes
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Feb 3, 2008, 02:44 PM
 
Originally Posted by Noonster View Post
Tried putting it in the router only and not on the mac but that did not fix the Adium MSN problem... this was only sorted when it was input on the Mac - what would be the reason for this??

Also what are the advantages of using Open DNS to just leaving it set as default (your ISP's)?

Thanks
Your Mac does not query your router for DNS requests, it queries the servers defined in your network preferences. If you are using DHCP this will automatically be assigned.

Using OpenDNS provides a good secondary/backup DNS server to query in case your ISP's server is not responding, it may also pick up DNS changes faster, may cache DNS requests in a different way which may make some uncached domains respond quicker.
     
Cold Warrior
Moderator
Join Date: Jan 2001
Location: Polwaristan
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Feb 3, 2008, 03:03 PM
 
Originally Posted by besson3c View Post
Your Mac does not query your router for DNS requests, it queries the servers defined in your network preferences. If you are using DHCP this will automatically be assigned.

Using OpenDNS provides a good secondary/backup DNS server to query in case your ISP's server is not responding, it may also pick up DNS changes faster, may cache DNS requests in a different way which may make some uncached domains respond quicker.
Is there a way for me to bypass the DNS server assigned by DHCP? I'm thinking of a hotel or its ISP, for example, where their DNS server is always listed first.
     
Noonster  (op)
Dedicated MacNNer
Join Date: Nov 2004
Location: England, UK
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Feb 3, 2008, 05:21 PM
 
Originally Posted by besson3c View Post
Your Mac does not query your router for DNS requests, it queries the servers defined in your network preferences. If you are using DHCP this will automatically be assigned.

Using OpenDNS provides a good secondary/backup DNS server to query in case your ISP's server is not responding, it may also pick up DNS changes faster, may cache DNS requests in a different way which may make some uncached domains respond quicker.
If my Mac does not query my router for DNS then why would I ever want to put the IP's in the router?

The servers in my network pref's are currently (in order)
- 192.168.1.1
- 208.67.222.222
- 208.67.220.220

My mac is connected to the router with static IP but using DHCP to get all other details (subnet mask etc...)

Does this mean when I visit a site my mac will look at the router (192.168.1.1) and go through the dns servers on there (my ISP's as not changed them), then if it can't find a site it will look using 208.67.222.222 then display site if found, if not then move down the list to the next etc...??

Trying to get my head around how it works...

I;m guessing its always best to leave my router in there (if the above is correct) so it checks that first, and then only uses OPEN DNS Severs as a backup??

Thanks for the advice!!
MacBook • 13.3" MacBook Aluminum Unibody, 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo, 2GB, 250GB
iMac G5 • 20" iMac G5, 1.8GHz, 1GB, 160GB, SD, AP, BT/KB/MS
iPod Mini • Silver, 4GB
iPhone 3G • Black, 16GB
     
ghporter
Administrator
Join Date: Apr 2001
Location: San Antonio TX USA
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Feb 3, 2008, 06:35 PM
 
With many/most routers, you can enter a manual set of DNS servers in the router, then tell the client computers to use the router's IP as their DNS servers. It works on my Linksys and with ALL my computers, those with manual IPs and those with DHCP IPs. So Noonster, if you take that one extra step and Open DNS changes addresses for any reason, you'll only have to change the data in the router.

Glenn -----OTR/L, MOT, Tx
     
besson3c
Clinically Insane
Join Date: Mar 2001
Location: yes
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Feb 3, 2008, 07:20 PM
 
Originally Posted by Cold Warrior View Post
Is there a way for me to bypass the DNS server assigned by DHCP? I'm thinking of a hotel or its ISP, for example, where their DNS server is always listed first.
All the Network pane is write to /etc/resolv.conf. You might want to try hard coding in the OpenDNS IPs into this file. If you Google resolv.conf or do a "man resolv.conf" you should find out more about how this file works.
     
besson3c
Clinically Insane
Join Date: Mar 2001
Location: yes
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Feb 3, 2008, 07:22 PM
 
Originally Posted by Noonster View Post
If my Mac does not query my router for DNS then why would I ever want to put the IP's in the router?

The servers in my network pref's are currently (in order)
- 192.168.1.1
- 208.67.222.222
- 208.67.220.220

My mac is connected to the router with static IP but using DHCP to get all other details (subnet mask etc...)

Does this mean when I visit a site my mac will look at the router (192.168.1.1) and go through the dns servers on there (my ISP's as not changed them), then if it can't find a site it will look using 208.67.222.222 then display site if found, if not then move down the list to the next etc...??

Trying to get my head around how it works...

I;m guessing its always best to leave my router in there (if the above is correct) so it checks that first, and then only uses OPEN DNS Severs as a backup??

Thanks for the advice!!
I've never played around with using my router as a DNS server, so perhaps I was wrong about not wanting to query your router. If your router does support this, you can test this by doing a:

host apple.com 192.168.1.1

This will do a DNS query on apple.com using 192.168.1.1 as your DNS server.
     
Noonster  (op)
Dedicated MacNNer
Join Date: Nov 2004
Location: England, UK
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Feb 4, 2008, 04:42 AM
 
Originally Posted by ghporter View Post
With many/most routers, you can enter a manual set of DNS servers in the router, then tell the client computers to use the router's IP as their DNS servers. It works on my Linksys and with ALL my computers, those with manual IPs and those with DHCP IPs. So Noonster, if you take that one extra step and Open DNS changes addresses for any reason, you'll only have to change the data in the router.
Sounds good that mate...

I have a D-Link G-604T so will enter the details on that tonight, save all settings and then soft reboot the router - hopefully it should work as you have said and all my computers can enjoy Open DNS via the router instead of setting them all manually.

Thanks
Darren
MacBook • 13.3" MacBook Aluminum Unibody, 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo, 2GB, 250GB
iMac G5 • 20" iMac G5, 1.8GHz, 1GB, 160GB, SD, AP, BT/KB/MS
iPod Mini • Silver, 4GB
iPhone 3G • Black, 16GB
     
Noonster  (op)
Dedicated MacNNer
Join Date: Nov 2004
Location: England, UK
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Feb 4, 2008, 04:43 AM
 
Originally Posted by besson3c View Post
I've never played around with using my router as a DNS server, so perhaps I was wrong about not wanting to query your router. If your router does support this, you can test this by doing a:

host apple.com 192.168.1.1

This will do a DNS query on apple.com using 192.168.1.1 as your DNS server.
Was looking to see how to do a DNS lookup... so will try this tonight along with the above... see what happens.

Thanks
Darren
MacBook • 13.3" MacBook Aluminum Unibody, 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo, 2GB, 250GB
iMac G5 • 20" iMac G5, 1.8GHz, 1GB, 160GB, SD, AP, BT/KB/MS
iPod Mini • Silver, 4GB
iPhone 3G • Black, 16GB
     
ginoledesma
Mac Elite
Join Date: Apr 2000
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Feb 4, 2008, 04:09 PM
 
Originally Posted by besson3c View Post
All the Network pane is write to /etc/resolv.conf. You might want to try hard coding in the OpenDNS IPs into this file. If you Google resolv.conf or do a "man resolv.conf" you should find out more about how this file works.
A word of warning: this file gets overwritten when you change locations (through network preferences) or when updates are pushed through DHCP. It is best that you make changes through Network Preferences.

I've been using OpenDNS for some of the places where I visit for "trust" reasons, but I've found it performs horribly in cases. During a trip to Southeast Asia, where I had less than stellar results with a poor cable broadband connection, OpenDNS kept on returning me their IP Address instead of the actual host's IP Address -- which happens when the IP address can't be looked up fast enough.

One thing I dislike, though, is that it returns me a "friendly" page-not-found error for hostnames that don't exist. I much prefer the browser to report this to me than having them do it, but I suppose that's a value-added service on their part (it's free, so you get what they give you).
     
ginoledesma
Mac Elite
Join Date: Apr 2000
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Feb 4, 2008, 04:11 PM
 
Originally Posted by Noonster View Post
Was looking to see how to do a DNS lookup... so will try this tonight along with the above... see what happens.

Thanks
Darren
A more advanced tool is dig and it's predecessor, nslookup. With dig, you can find out other things about DNS, such as the mail servers for a given domain name, their authorized name servers, and such. This tool is also available in GUI form in Network Utility (under the lookup tab).

The syntax for dig is similar:

dig <hostname> <dns_server_you_want_to_use>

The latter part being optional.
     
besson3c
Clinically Insane
Join Date: Mar 2001
Location: yes
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Feb 4, 2008, 04:52 PM
 
Originally Posted by ginoledesma View Post
A word of warning: this file gets overwritten when you change locations (through network preferences) or when updates are pushed through DHCP. It is best that you make changes through Network Preferences.

I've been using OpenDNS for some of the places where I visit for "trust" reasons, but I've found it performs horribly in cases. During a trip to Southeast Asia, where I had less than stellar results with a poor cable broadband connection, OpenDNS kept on returning me their IP Address instead of the actual host's IP Address -- which happens when the IP address can't be looked up fast enough.

One thing I dislike, though, is that it returns me a "friendly" page-not-found error for hostnames that don't exist. I much prefer the browser to report this to me than having them do it, but I suppose that's a value-added service on their part (it's free, so you get what they give you).

It overwrites the whole thing? That kind of sucks...

Well, you could create a little double-clickable shell script that would do something like this:

sudo echo "openDNS config stuff" >> /etc/resolv.conf

This would append the openDNS IP information to /etc/resolv.conf
     
ginoledesma
Mac Elite
Join Date: Apr 2000
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Feb 4, 2008, 07:21 PM
 
Originally Posted by besson3c View Post
It overwrites the whole thing? That kind of sucks...
Yeah, it overwrites it. But all of that information is generated based on the data stored in Network Preferences anyhow. So specifying the DNS servers manually should achieve the same effect.
     
   
Thread Tools
 
Forum Links
Forum Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts
BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off
Top
Privacy Policy
All times are GMT -4. The time now is 10:45 AM.
All contents of these forums © 1995-2017 MacNN. All rights reserved.
Branding + Design: www.gesamtbild.com
vBulletin v.3.8.8 © 2000-2017, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.,