I had heard about OpenDNS a while ago but for some reason never looked much into it. A magazine article tonight reminded me about OpenDNS so I thought I’d take a look. Well, I’m happy that I did so far. I thought I would outline a few steps for you to get OpenDNS setup on your machine.
First, what is OpenDNS?
OpenDNS is a better DNS, free to all. OpenDNS uses its distributed network of DNS servers to speed up your Internet experience, increase reliability, improve security and make DNS smarter for users all over the world.
Basically you can stop using your ISPs DNS, which can often be slower or unreliable, and use this instead. Here is how to set it up on an Ubuntu machine. You can see the Ubuntu setup instructions on the OpenDNS site if you’d like more information.
sudo cp /etc/resolv.conf /etc/resolv.conf.auto
sudo gedit /etc/dhcp3/dhclient.conf
Look for the below line, which will be commented, and match this setting.
# append the following line to the document
prepend domain-name-servers 208.67.222.222,208.67.220.220;
Once your entry matches this you will want to save the file and restart networking using a command such as the one below.
sudo ifdown eth0 && sudo ifup eth0
You can then visit this address to verify that you’re using the new OpenDNS service.
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