OpenDNS failed to serve some DNS records for a short period of time
I want to start this article by saying that I am a big fan of OpenDNS and a lot of people that know me can tell you how many times I have recommended them to change their default DNS servers provided by their ISPs with OpenDNS ones. The main reason for this is speed, both in serving requests and in propagating changes through the Internet. Not a few times I was amazed to see that my ISP’s DNS servers wouldn’t hold on some records created in the last 6 hours but OpenDNS handles them in the first 15 minutes or so…
Other cool features are the ability to create shortcuts for your network (you need to register, free of charge) like pointing http://radu to http://radu.cotescu.com, customizing the error pages when records aren’t found, filtering the traffic for your network (denying access to porn, phishing, auctions, adware sites, etc.) and monitoring your network requests. For that you either have to register your static IP with your account or to use a dynamic IP client for updating your info on their servers.
But today the inevitable happened: OpenDNS failed to resolve the address of my blog. The sky collapsed (literally as Bucharest was under some thunderstorms). After some checking (they do provide a domain checkup on their servers with the option to manually refresh the info for the domains) I was stunned to see that the server from London doesn’t have any info for my domain. Strange. I then moved on to check their servers status (you can do that too) and there didn’t seem to be any problem, according to their info.
Next step:
tracepath cotescu.com
The trace stopped at one of OpenDNS servers. Mmmmkay. All I had to do was to wait. And I did. After one hour and a half everything went back to normal. Even so, I still recommend them because these accidents are extremely rare.
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You can point radu. to to radu.cotescu.com with a simple entry in the /etc/hosts file. I think windows also has something similar.
And your advice is valid, as OpenDNS’s uptime is far superior to that of your average Romanian ISP’s DNS server…
Yes, you can do that. But since I have two computers behind a router, if I choose that approach, I would have to edit both hosts files, one on Linux and one on Windows. And Windows is a bit bitchy when it comes to the hosts file if you have an anti-virus program installed (which is the only way to keep your Windows clean).
Therefore I prefer using OpenDNS’s features at the router level by using a client for updating my records to their servers. Actually I’m using DNS-O-Matic for updating both my dynamic IP and DNS A records to DynDNS and OpenDNS so that I can access my router from outside the network using a hostname and have my DNS settings like shortcuts set at the network level.