GoodBye Virgin Media DNS, Hello Open DNS

I have said goodbye to Virgin Media and its DNS service and welcomed Open DNS. DNS [Domain Name System] is used every time you browse the Internet.  You enter the human readable (well understandable anyway!) address of a website into your browser and the DNS, translates the into the IP address (4 group numbers) that is the physical location of the websites server.  Take this site for example: you have likely reached it by typing "www.richardlennox.net" into your browser address bar, DNS translates this into the server's IP address, 85.13.219.74, to which you are then directed. This makes the Internet much more usable for you and I, as we can simply type in the human readable name and the DNS does the work of locating its address.

Normally and properly your Internet Service Provider (in my case Virgin Media) does all this for you in the background and the service is generally great but Open DNS offers a much better service (and its still free!).  Open DNS claims "to make your Internet blazing fast, block phishing sites and correct your typos on the fly".  While DNS does add a slight overhead to your Internet connection, the claim of making it faster I cannot prove and am a bit skeptical about, but the other two are the reasons I switched.

Blocking known phishing sites (you know those sites that try and get you to enter things like account details by pretending to be your bank so the site owners can steal all of your money!) is an extremely great feature.  It simply shows you a warning page saying the site you are trying to visit is a known fishing site, or that the site has been blacklisted for whatever reason and you should take care if you are wanting to continue to it. Great, especially for those who are not too savvy about these things.

Correcting typos on the fly is another great feature.  Ever typed .cm instead of .com or .nt instead of .net? Open DNS will try and correct it for you.  Or if you include a complete typo within the address it won;t show you a default browser error but show you what you typed and asks if it was what you were looking for. Pretty neat, hats off to Open DNS!