Richard Lennox
- @mirajavora nice!
- Evolving the role of a Sys Admin: http://t.co/Iyo0kK09
- Deep fried ear - Glasgow's new delicacy! http://t.co/VH61MD19
Virgin Media DNS vs Open DNS: Update
It is a few months now since I changed the DNS server I use from the standard Virgin Media DNS to the one serviced by OpenDNS. It is now time for an update.
Using Open DNS has been a breeze. I have noticed very little difference in the speed at which web pages loaded but to be honest I didn't really expect to see much difference. What has been really useful is the on-the-fly spelling correction. Even though I can pretty much touch type, I still hit a variety of common mistakes, especially when I am in a hurry and not paying attention. Most of these are caught by Open DNS and redirected to the intended site. The anti-phishing solution is also pretty nifty, although less frequently used as I can generally spot phishing.
I did however run into a little problem with Virgin Media when I last complained about my internet speed. They were adamant that it would be Open DNS causing the slow down, but in a little over the phone experiment, Open DNS beat their own DNS servers, by a fraction. Although not really enough to call it a clear winner it was a sign of connection issues not DNS issues. To be fair with Virgin, other suppliers may have insisted that I not use Open DNS but they didn't (or maybe they would if their technical support team found out what DNS is!).
Started having issues with "Unable to display page" a couple of weekends ago – Virgin Media, everything was fine when it was blueyonder.
Once I realised it was a DNS issue – Google took me straight here and from there I discovered the wonders of Open DNS.
Problem solved! Thanks very much.
I have tried open DNS with my virgin media connection and it has not been too bad. It is a little slow (average ping response of about 60ms) compared to a local DNS service (where I would hope for about 20ms) but there seems to be a problem when it comes to virgin media and DNS servers – whats a boy to do?
I use OpenDNS settings on my router rather than Virgin Media’s DNS servers. I used to have problems connecting to various web sites, but since switching to OpenDNS I hardly ever get the “web page cannot be found” error.