What’s that you say? I can speed up my internet without doing anything? Surely not?

Well you’re kind of right, technically we’re not going to “speed it up”, however pages and websites will appear to load much faster, making better use of your connection.

Here’s how the Internet works:

Every computer has an Address that consists of up to 12 digits. Those addresses may look something like: 210.48.100.45

DNS is the name of the “protocol” that changes what you type (Such as Pressf1.co.nz or google.co.nz) in to that computers IP Address (210.48.100.45 or 64.233.169.104). Regardless of if you noticed this or not in the past, you’re using DNS every time you go to a new website, or Ads get loaded from a different server on the website you’re using. You’re most likely just using your ISP’s default servers, the details of them are given to your PC / Modem / Router and it’s told to use your ISP’s DNS servers every time you connect to the Interent.

The problem is that many DNS Servers like your ISP’s aren’t always setup as well as they could be.  That’s not specifically your ISP’s fault, it just seems to be the way it is. They’re just not always as reliable as they could be, nor as fast.

Here’s where OpenDNS comes in. It’s free for anybody to use, it’s super fast, incredibly reliable, and it’s got some other cool features you can play with later such as blocking pornographic websites or known malware sites. Here’s a little bit about OpenDNS:

http://www.opendns.com/solutions/overview/

Basically, some people at times  have issues with websites taking their time to load certain parts (Like the Ads seem to always stop the page from loading completely), and mostly people try to blame the website itself. However, what I’ve found in NZ is that it’s more often than not DNS that’s causing the issues if you’re trying to go to somewhere like TradeMe and find it’s slow (or that your PC may have spyware / malware / viruses etc), and not the actual website itself.

Anyway, here’s some useful documentation to get you up and running:

If you’re a Home User trialling it on a single PC

If you’re on a Network and want to change your Router settings

I suggest you try it on just your PC first, and be amazed at the difference it can really make to your browsing!

When you’re done, you can come back to this page and see if the Button up the top of the screen has changed to say that you’re now using OpenDNS, or not.

If this helps you, please let me know, leave a brief comment, I’d love to hear from you.

Khắc phục lỗi không vào được Facebook

Fix DNS để vào được Facebook

Rất nhiều bạn dùng Internet (đặc biệt là của Viettel) không thể vào Facebook. Nhiều người hoang mang, cho rằng sự cố này là do các ISP chặn Facebook để tạo điều kiện cho mạng xã hội VN “phát triển”. Tuy nhiên, đây là lỗi DNS chả liên quan gì việc chặn nào cả !

Đơn giản là sử dụng OpenDNS : http://tangtocnet.com/index.php?showtopic=67

Hoặc Toonel : http://tangtocnet.com/index.php?showtopic=48

Everyone who use Internet in Malaysia now keep on talk about “Eh, potong good or not?”
This picture below will tell you the answer if you have this question.

I have Streamyx, Celcom & P1 Wimax now.
But I will not talk about Celcom here, since this topic is about potong or not.

For Streamyx, I have very bad experience with their customer service. When got problem, I always call to their call center. Their customer used to make me heart attack. But now, the quality of their customer service had improved a lot. Those voice that used to make me heart attack is no longer there anymore, a lot of new voice and with better quality. The most important thing, these new people won’t make you piss off until heart attack.

While for speed and stability, undeniable, it is much more better than P1 Wimax.

Click here to read the full article.

Thì lúc đó bạn cần đổi địa chỉ DNS của Viettel hiện tại trong máy bạn sang địa chỉ DNS của openDNS. Không rõ nguyên nhân vì sao mà Viettel chặn các kết nối 2 trang từ bên Mĩ này (và có thể nhiều trang khác mà tôi chưa biết). Đổi sang OpenDNS có thể dùng dòng lệnh hay chỉ việc trỏ và click. Ở đây tôi trình bày cách thứ hai.

Ở màn hình desktop, hãy click chuột phải vào biểu tượng kết nối và chọn Edit Connections…

Ở thẻ Wired, chọn tên kết nối đang dùng rồi bấm Edit…

Chuyển đến thẻ IPv4 Settings, ở phần Method: chọn Automatic (DHCP) addresses only (tức chỉ xin IP tự động thôi). Lúc này ô DNS servers sẽ được kích hoạt, hãy điền vào đó 208.67.222.222 hoặc 208.67.220.220 . Bấm Apply… và điền mật khẩu để xác nhận.

Nếu kết nối bị mất, hãy bấm chuột trái vào biểu tượng kết nối và chọn kết nối của bạn.

Bây giờ hãy thử truy cập lại 2 trang trên đi nhé.

Nếu thích bạn có thể tạo một kết nối riêng dùng OpenDNS, còn mặc định thì dùng DNS do máy cấp, bằng cách bấm vào nút Add… ở bước thứ 2 và làm giống các bước tiếp theo.

Còn nếu bạn dùng Windows? Xin lỗi, tôi đã không dùng Windows từ lâu lắm rồi.

Kimi zaman haklı yada haksız sebeplerden dolayı internet kullanma özgürlüğümüz kısıtlanıyor. Bu çok yararlı yayınlar yapan site de olabiliyor, zararlı içerik bulunduran sitelerde. Her ne olursa olsun bir şekilde bunları aşıyoruz. Ben size bunun basit bir yolunu göstereceğim.

Şimdiye kadar Youtube, Google servisleri, Last.fm, Myspace kapatılan büyük sitelerden ve bunlar sadece benim bildiklerim. Tabii ki kararlara saygı gösteriyor ve kapatma nedenlerinin boş olmadığını biliyoruz ancak kapatarak olmaması gerektiği savunan arkadaşlarımız oldukça fazla.

Nasıl yapacağımıza geçersek; öncelikle “Ağ Bağlantılarım”ı açıp, ayar yapmak üzere internete bağlandığımız geçerli bağlantıyı bulalım. “Yerel Ağ Bağlantısı”na sağ tıklayıp, “Özellikler”i seçelim.

Yasaklanmış Sielere Girmek İçin DNS Ayarı 1

DNS ile ilgili ayar yapacağımızdan “Internet Protocol (TCP/IP)” ayarlarını listeden bulup, özelliklerini açalım. Açılan diğer pencerede ise, “Aşağıdaki DNS sunucu adreslerini kullan” seçeneğini tıklayarak hemen altındaki boşluklara sırasıyla; 4 . 2 . 2 . 3 ve 4 . 2 . 2 . 4 yazarak, “Tamam” butonu ile onaylayalım.

Yasaklanmış Sielere Girmek İçin DNS Ayarı 2

Şimdi, DNS’i değiştirdik ve rahatça internette gezinebiliriz.

Alguna vez leí ya ni me acuerdo dónde:

Esto es linux, no se trata de preguntar “¿Se puede?” si no de preguntar “¿Cómo se hace?”. En linux todo se puede.

Dicho y hecho; Como consultar un servidor de DNS específico sin modificar el archivo /etc/resolv.conf con dig:

dig @208.67.222.222 midominio.com

Y para nslookup:

~ $ nslookup

> server 208.67.222.222

Default server: 208.67.222.222
Address: 208.67.222.222#53

midominio.com

Util para saber como anda eso de la propagación de DNS cuando acabamos de hacer algún tipo de modificación.

208.67.222.222 es el primer DNS de OpenDNS, ambos comandos son parte del paquete bind-tools.

This week, OpenDNS announced two pay plans with additional features.  OpenDNS Deluxe for $9.95 / year  and OpenDNS Enterprise.  I use this company to do my content filtering of my home network for free.

I was just sitting there having a large Americano with an extra shot idling away some time and with the wireless function enabled on the netbook it detected and connected the coffee shop’s wireless network perfectly. Except that Starbucks use a BTOpenzone pay service which got me thinking. How do you regulate a pay wireless service which is unencrypted without installing any software on users devices or getting hostnames or MAC addresses from customers?

Firing up Firefox, I shoved the address for Google in the address bar and press Return. Rather than loading Google’s homepage, it instead takes you to a BTOpenzone login page where it prompts you for a username and password. So they must do a DNS hijack which redirects to their proxies where they check whether a time limited cookie is amongst your cookies. If not, you get the login page.

So, could using a service like OpenDNS allow you to bypass this and get the service for free? Coffee for thought…

Of course, if they’re sensible, they’ll block outbound DNS requests except those originating from their own DNS servers. Experience dictates though that most IT Security teams only ever patch holes in their security arrangements after someone has been exploiting it for some time and they notice it when auditing the log files, and how many of a coffee shop’s punters would even know how to do this let alone think about it?

For a corporate network, you should never be able to do this as the default behaviour should be to block all outbound traffic except that which has been explicitly permitted, and a good asset management process with solid CMDB to track changes along with thorough audit procedures allows you to do just that. If someone needs something opened up then they submit a change request with the requisite business case which then gets approved or denied.

But you can’t do this for public networks where your users will be doing everything from email to browsing to VPNing into work to playing online games such that you have no idea as to what needs to be opened up or not. Restricting your paying customers to just surfing the web isn’t going to hold much dice, and would just encourage more and more businesses and software developers to continue the rampant misuse of ports 80 and 443 and to expand on the trend to treat the http and https ports as ‘universal ports’.

Since August I’ve been seeing some pretty spotty and in-consistent DNS service at my house.  I run Comcast cable internet, and finally got sick of slow DNS response times, timeouts, and failures.

I learned that Comcast has decide to centrailze and essentially “customize” our DNS service so when something is not found we are re-directed to their own search page.

Here is some more information:

Comcast Re-direction goes nationwide

Your Rights with comcast DNS Re-direction

DON’T PUT UP WITH THIS!

Re-direct your DNS to an outside service like Open DNS.  I did this and my problems are SOLVED!

Here are the instructions for you newbies:

Open DNS Step 1

For advanced users, just use these servers:

208.67.222.222
208.67.220.220

Fast DNS lookups are here again!

Been around a week since I switch to OpenDNS instead of TMnut’s DNS. What is DNS? It is something like server that directs you to the where abouts of a website that you wanna visit. And because of that, TMnut’s DNS is basically screwed up and slow, which makes you internet enjoyment sour.

To go to the site at a better speed, I just tried to use OpenDNS. To my surprise, I had a terrific speed!!! Pictures loads super fast than previous, sites loads alot faster. To prove my claims, I have did online speed testing on a few test sites. Results, to my amaze it was 20-30% FASTER than normal DNS!!! That shows how “snail” TMnut DNS server is (please provide better quality service).

Till today I am still using it and I am still very happy todays OpenDNS that gave me that 20-30% speed boost that my line dreadfully need!!! THANK YOU OPENDNS!!! Even youtube LOADS FASTER!!!

If you need more info about OpenDNS, feel free to Google them out. And on a side note, don’t do your banking with OpenDNS its don’t feel safe enough for that at the moment.

I stumbleupon OpenDNS.com and decided to give a try. Sign-up is necessary if you want to track your history. Three simple steps to get you up and running. Now, I have it setup on my home-network. Below shows a bit of my my settings and statistics.

I like how easy it is to filter contents and view the history with graphs. OpenDNS even allows you filter out individual website. Shortcut is another cool feature, which is like a safety net for when you are typing in the dark and you misspell .com to .cmo. In the case you misspell, OpenDNS will still redirect you to the right site but you must have the entries in there to correct your common mistakes.

1. Change the DNS in your router

208.67.222.222
208.67.220.220

2. Sign-up for an account (Optional)
3. Login to manage your account (Optional)

Content Filtering

Categories

Statistics

Create Shortcuts

Eğer bazı sebeplerle(!) DNS adresinizi değiştirdiyseniz ve opendns kullanıyorsanız ve de Firefox’ta arama çubuğunun(awesome bar) Google’in kendimi şanslı hissediyorum özelliğini kullanmasını seviyorsanız, muhtemelen opendns’e geçince bu sistem artık çalışmayacaktır. Direk siteye girmek yerine opendns guide diye bir arama sayfası açılmaktadır. Ayrıca sonuçları da Google’dan çok daha kalitesizdir. Bunu engelleyip tekrar eski haline döndürmek için şöyle bir şey yapabilirsiniz:

Mozilla Firefox için:

- Firefox adres çubuğuna about:config yazılır

- “Söz veriyorum dikkatli olacağım” butonuna basılır

- Açılan sayfadaki arama kutusuna “keyword” yazılır

- Muhtemelen listede iki sonuç çıkacaktır. Şöyle bir görüntü olmalı:

- keywor.URL olana sağ tıklayıp “Değerini değiştir”e basılır ve yeni değer olarak şunları yazabilirsiniz:

1) Eğer direk awesome bara yazılanın Google’da aranmasını isterseniz şunu yazın:

http://www.google.com/search?q=

2) Ya da benim gibi “Kendimi şanslı hissediyorum”u kullanmak isteyenlerdenseniz:

http://www.google.com/search?btnI=I%27m+Feeling+Lucky&q=

Internet Explorer için:

- Başlat -> Çalıştır yolu izlenerek çıkan pencereye “regedit” yazılır. Böylece kayıt defteri açılır

- Şu kayda ulaşılır:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\SearchScopes

- Oradan şu değer açılır:

{0633EE93-D776-472f-A0FF-E1416B8B2E3A}

- Yukarıdaki girdinin değeri aşağıdaki ile değiştirilir(Tabi Windows Live Search için):

http://search.live.com/results.aspx?q={searchTerms}

- Eğer Google isterseniz o zaman girdi değerine şunu yazın:

http://www.google.com/search?q={searchTerms}

WordPress, Blogspot, Youtube, Dailymotion, bir kaç evrim savunucu bilimadamının siteleri ve daha onlarcası, ülkemizden erişime kapatıldı. Erişimi engelleyen zihniyet sansürün bir çözüm olmadığı noktasını kavramak bir yana bir sayfanın içeriği yüzünden tüm platformu erişime engellemek gibi zihniyetlerine yakışır bir zeka örneği gösterdiler.

Ve şimdi sıra Lastfm ile Myspace ağlarına geldi. Bu sosyal ağların ortak özelliği muzik paylaşım platformları olmaları. Yanlış anlaşılmasın, el altından albümlerin dağıtıldığı forum ve sitelerden çok farklılar. Sanatçılar kendi sayfalarını açarak sevenlerine ulaşabiliyorlar, konser duyurularını, yeni albümlerinin tanıtımını yapabiliyorlar. Eğer isterler tüm albüm ya da şarkıları isterlerse de yasal sınır olan 30 saniyelik örnekleri sayfalarından paylaşabiliyorlar. Ve yasadığı paylaşımlara, sanatçılardan bağımsız yayınlara kesinlikle izin verilmiyor. Bir başvuru ve grup ya da sanatçının kendini tanıtması ile paylaşım yayından kaldırılıyor, ve bu konuda her iki sitede oldukça titiz davranıyorlar.

Neden erişimin engellendiğine gelince, Müyap’ın şikayeti üzerine alınmış erişim engelleme kararları. Geçen TV’de izledim Müyap Başkanı’nın insanı çileden çıkartan açıklamalarını. Telif haklarından dem vuruyorlardı da meydan boş kalınca çarpıtmalar diz boyuydu. Dediğim gibi her iki site de telif hakları konusunda işleri sıkı tutarken onlara başvurmadan savcılığa başvurmak neden? Ayrıca her iki sitenin Türkiye temsilcilikleri mevcut. Yani Youtube’da olduğu gibi karşımızda yetkili yok palavralarına sığınamazlar ki TV konuşmasında zaten işin gerçek yüzü ortaya çıktı. Müyap’ın Myspace ile bir protokol hazırlığında olduğunu söyleyerek yargı yolu ile baskı oluşturmak istediklerini farkında olmadan ağzından kaçırdı.

Evet, korsan ve yasadışı paylaşımı engellemek, sanatçıların telif haklarını korumak gerekli. Lakin bu son iki erişim engelleme bu koruma durumunun nasıl süistimal edilebildiğini göstermiş oldu. Her iki sitenin de dediğim gibi Türkiye temsilcilikleri var, vergi ödüyorlar, para kazanıyorlar. Yargı yolunu baskı aracı kullanarak haksız kayıplara uğratılıyorlar. Sadece iki sitenin açısından bakmamak lazım; kendilerini duyurmak için maddi imkanı olmayan sanatçılar da bu siteler üzerinden “biz de varız” diyorlar ve ne yazık ki onlara da çelme atılmış oldu. Tabi ki bir de işin “sansürcü ülke” damgası var ki fazlası ile hakkediyoruz.

Sorunun başka bir boyutu daha var; yargının rolü. Son iki kararda mahkeme kararı mevcut değil. Savcılığın önlem için almış olduğu erişim engelleme kararları. Yani daha yargılaması dahi yapılmadan sadece şikayetçi tarafın başvurusu üzerine alınmış kararlar ki bu durum daha çok belalar açar başlara. Beğenmediğiniz bir site mi var? Gidin bir kaç yorum ekleyin, sayfa oluşturun sonra savcılığa suç duyurusunda bulunun ve erişim engellensin. Mahkeme olur da kararı iptal eder ama o zamana kadar vermek istediğiniz rahatsızlığın tadını sonuna kadar çıkartın. Çocuk oyuncağı gibi geliyor kulağa ama ne yazık ki durum bu.

Bir gün sonra nete girdiğimizde “internete erişim mahkeme kararı ile engellenmiştir!” kararı ile karşılaşırsak şaşırmamak lazım, eğer sessiz kalır ve er geç alır ya da ben bir şekilde erişirim zaten kapanırsa kapansın dersek bunun sonu yok. Her ne kadar bizde erişim engelleme çok sıkı olmasa da bir çok otoriter ülkede ne yazık ki hiç bir yol sökmüyor bu engellemeleri atlatmak adına. En azından okuduğunuz gazetelerin yazarlarına rahatsızlığını iletin, forumlarda konular açın, MSN gibi ortamlarda durum iletilerinize not düşün,… Bunlar belki ufak şeyler olabilir ama inanın ki bu küçük adımlar dahi artık yeterince güçlü etki yaratabiliyor birleştiklerinde.

Sansürsüz ve özgür bir ülke dileği ile!

Not: Erişim engelleme kararı DNS bazlı olarak uygulanıyor. Engellemeyi atlatmak için Opendns kullanmak yeterli. Bu adresten kullandığınız işletim sistemine göre ayar yaparak Opendns kullanabilirisiniz.

Wanting to make changes to the wifi and DNS settings of the new routers that Cincinnati Bell (CB) is routinely installing now, I went about researching and using trial and error. The goal was to implement WPA2 wifi security and OpenDNS at a router level, so as to help clients be a bit more secure.

Overview of high speed modem/router

Near as I can tell, Cincinnati Bell is using its installed fiber in urban locations to offer a high speed internet, combined with television channels via internet, so-called IPTV. Westell has long been a provider of equipment to our local phone company and this device is meant to offer “Advanced, dual-core processing power with Ethernet, MoCA, or VDSL2 WAN interface for fiber-to-the-home and fiber-to-the-curb networks.” (link) These are hunka-chunka, white bricks and I’ll leave it to others to show us what’s actually inside them and perhaps explain their hugeness.

Getting access to advanced settings

As made clear on Westell’s web site their stuff is marketed to ISP’s, not thru retail / wholesale channels. As such, finding a manual is like pulling teeth. I must give credit to others’ posts on for helping me just figure out the interface and that you need to click on menus up top AND on the left.)

First: Set wifi to WPA2

Cincinnati Bell routinely sets up WEP, even though it’s known to be useless in the face of hacks. (To their credit, they used to always be setup as unsecured / open!) But, WEP lets customers use older equipment, especially gaming systems, so I suppose it cuts down on support calls.  Setup was pretty straightforward. Just point to the IP of the gateway (seems like CB or Westell has a tradition of making this 192.168.200.1) and input the default admin password of  (you guessed it) “admin” and “password”.    Using wireless button, wireless settings menu option (on left) set to WPA2, with PSK (Pre-Shared Key) and using AES encryption algorithm.

Westell conveniently locates all wifi setting in one spot.

On to OpenDNS

I won’t go into all the benefits of OpenDNS, but will just talk about configuring it on the UltraLine Series3 . Note that OpenDNS usually does a pretty good job of explaining this stuff at their site, but it didn’t have anything about this device when I last visited.

1.    OpenDNS
a.    OpenDNS setup with account (not described here)
b.    OpenDNS software (not described here)
c.    Westell Router settings:
i.    On top, My Network
ii.    On left, Network Connection
iii.    Click WAN VDSL, either the main link or the pencil
iv.    On left, click Settings
v.    Change DNS Server option
1.    From Obtain DNS Server Addresses Automatically
2.    To settings Use the following DNS server addresses
a.    207.68.222.222 and
b.    207.68.220.220
vi.    Test by resetting router (Advance menu and Reboot) and resetting computer’s network connection.
d.    Save Westell configuration
i.    At top, Advanced
ii.    Do you want to proceed? Yes
iii.    Configuration file option
iv.    At bottom, Save Configuration File
v.    Downloads a file called Wireless Broadband Configuration.conf. Put this someplace safe.

Here’s a pic of the Settings page:

Ebbene si, ho pagato l’obolo di 30€ per avere il non nuovo sistema operativo made in Apple, l’han chiamato Snow Leopard, come dire che la neve ci mette poco a raffreddare gli entusiasmi.

L’installazione è stata facile, giusto un paio di clic, tutto configurato come nel precedente Leopard. L’unica cosa che ho notato sono stati i tre pallini per chiudere/ridimensionare la finestra di un colore più vivo. Per il resto nessuna novità ancora riscontrata.

Il problema si è presentato quando il gioco si è fatto duro, ossia con la connessione wireless del politecnico. Ovviamente pensavo che anche questo sarebbe rimasto sostanzialmente uguale e invece mi sbagliavo. Dopo due ore di tentativi mi sono dovuto arrendere, Snow Leopard per qualche arcano motivo non vuole saperne della rete del poli: WPA Enterprise con autenticazione TLS.

Le possibili candidate cause sono tre:

1. Gestione dei certificati a muzzo
2. Gestione delle impostazioni proxy a muzzo
3. Associamento alle reti nascoste a muzzo

In ogni caso non posso lasciare la situazione cosi, come membro del direttivo del POuL nonchè autore della guida wifi a prova di scemo, ho il dovere di trovare una soluzione, ammesso che ci sia…sigh!

————————————————————————————————

Bene, il problema era dei server DNS, Snow Leopard a differenza di Leopard non mi permette, impostando il proxy del poli, di usare automaticamente i DNS del politecnico invece dei soliti openDNS che avevo impostato come default. Il risultato era che nè firefox nè safari riuscivano a risolvere nessun indirizzo. Ho comunque dovuto togliere gli openDNS, più avanti proverò a fare delle posizioni preimpostate.

Öncelikle müjdeyi vereyim ki sistemin önemi anlaşılsın: OpenDNS, muhteşem (!) adli sistemimizin erişimine engel koyduğu sitelere (Şu anki en önemlileri: WordPress ve YouTube) hız kaybı olmaksızın ve en fazla 1 buçuk dakikalık bir işlemle ulaşmanızı sağlar.

Discalimer: I take no responsibility if you screw up your computer or can’t connect to the internet after following this! If you do mess things up, do what I do, head on over to Ubuntu Forums and ask for help.

What:

This howto will show you how to setup your Ubuntu Jaunty 9.04 machine to use OpenDNS to resolve DNS names, and keep local cache that will survive machine reboots. It’s a modified set of instructions that I first posted here.

Why:

There are several reasons why you’d want to to this.The quick one-liner: faster, more reliable web browsing. For a little more detailed response read on, otherwise, you can skip straight to the How below.

Need more info, okay. First, it might be a good idea to know what DNS is. Basically, it’s the address service that translates the domain google.com into it’s IP address 74.125.45.100. People generally find it easier to remember domain names than IP addresses. But the computer needs the IP address to load websites, so when you make a request for any files on google.com, your computer asks a DNS server for Google’s IP address. 99.9% of the time, your ISP provides DNS servers for your computer to use, and you don’t have to think about it.

But this address lookup takes time. Over the course of loading just one file, you might not notice it, but when browsing a web page, you’re probably loading dozens of files (images, scripts, etc.) This can mean lots of DNS requests if the files are on different servers. And ISP-run DNS servers don’t always have the best track records on being the fastest or the most reliable. Ever have your router tell you that you have an internet connection, but you can’t get to any websites? Usually, it’s because the ISP’s DNS server is having issues. So yes, technically your computer can access the internet, but you can’t really use it, unless you happen to know the IP addresses of everywhere you want to go. But, most of us get to Google through google.com, not by remembering 74.125.45.100.

So why use OpenDNS? Because generally it provides a faster, more reliable DNS service than what your ISP service provides. OpenDNS lets you setup filters, and much, much more. And why a persistent local DNS cache? Because even requests to OpenDNS take some time. And most websites rarely change their IP address, so why constantly lookup an address that isn’t changing? By using a local cache, your computer won’t have to keep asking the DNS server for addresses, because it will remember addresses that you’ve already been to. Sure, every now and then your computer will need to ask a real DNS server for an address, like when you go to a new website, or even occasionally for sites you visit often, just in case their IP address has changed.

Otherwise, even if your computer only remembers an address for 15 minutes, that’ll improve your browsing experience significantly. So, ready for faster browsing?

How:

Okay, so we’re going to install the local DNS server called pdnsd, and a support package called resolvconf. Pdnsd will be responsible for remembering DNS addresses, and resolvconf is responsible for letting your computer know to use pdnsd.

In a Terminal window, run the following to install both resolvconf and pdnsd in the correct order:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install resolvconf && sudo apt-get install pdnsd

When prompted during the pdnsd install, select “Use resolvconf”. Then run the following to create a config file for resolvconf:

gksudo gedit /etc/resolvconf/run/interface/opendns

In the new document, paste the following so that resolvconf will know how to use OpenDNS:

nameserver 208.67.222.222
nameserver 208.67.220.220

Finally save the document, exit gedit, and run this command in the Terminal:

sudo resolvconf -u

Congratulations, welcome to faster browsing. To check that everything is working, try the following:

dig google.com

Verify that the SERVER line shows 127.0.0.1#53(127.0.0.1), which means you’re pointed at your local cache. Look at the Query time, which should show how long it took to ask for google’s IP address from OpenDNS the first time.

Now, if you run that command again:

dig google.com

You should see a significant time drop, like Query time: 0 msec. That means that everything is working, that instead of asking OpenDNS for the IP address, pdnsd responded with the cached information, which took no measurable time.