OpenDNS Launches Accounts
I just came back from dinner with David and Allison from OpenDNS and they gave me the scoop on a new feature that launches today. OpenDNS accounts give users more control over their online experience - allowing them to manage settings on different networks. This will come in handy if you like running OpenDNS and move between say work and home, each with their own IP. Simply login to your OpenDNS account and you won’t have to worry about reconfiguring anything.
While anyone can use the free account, it is geared more towards network administrators.
That’s my hotel IP for those wondering. I would have blurred my real one out.
With an OpenDNS Account, ISPs can provide their users with invaluable features like typo correction and phishing protection, while speeding users’ Internet experience and boosting DNS reliability. Additionally, network administrators can view DNS usage for their network in easy-to-understand graphs.
OpenDNS Accounts meets the needs of ISPs, while continuing to offer superior management and statistics to all customers, from individual users to the largest organizations. OpenDNS has built a global, loyal userbase, including ISPs worldwide who specifically requested features now readily available with an OpenDNS Account. Since the service’s public availability in July 2006, OpenDNS has answered more than 14 billion DNS requests including 1.5 billion in the past week.
Update: Check out their blog post about the new feature.
Thanks for the heads up! This is great. :)
Oooh, could that browser screenshot be firefox (OS X) with Prettywidgets? If so, I use that too :).
This is pretty cool and useful, thanks for point it out.
From Wikipedia:
OpenDNS earns a portion of its revenue by displaying advertisements on a search page shown when their system cannot automatically correct a domain name typo. OpenDNS claims it is not the same as Site Finder as it is purely an opt in service and that the advertising revenue pays for the customized DNS service.
According to OpenDNS, additional services that run on top of its enhanced DNS service will be provided, and some of them may cost money. These announcements have caused some users who are suspicious of OpenDNS’s agenda to drop the service.
One of the biggest criticisms is that OpenDNS removes the redundancy that traditional DNS offers. The traditional form of DNS relies on a decentralized collection of servers scattered throughout the world which offers a high level of redundancy. OpenDNS centralizes this system, making it more susceptible to failure.
Paul Vixie, in a message posted to a DNS Operations forum, criticized OpenDNS on several grounds, including the fact that it is limited to web surfing and that its centralization means a loss of privacy for its users.