OpenDNS is a better DNS, free to all. OpenDNS uses its distributed network of DNS servers to speed up your Internet experience, increase reliability, improve security and make DNS smarter for users all over the world.

Will this be configurable for our Internet tablets?

http://internet.newsforge.com/intern...1.shtml?tid=13

and

http://www.opendns.com/

As far as I can see this has nothing to do with the Internet tablet (or even your desktop computer). You get handled a DNS address from your DHCP server, and if not, then you're told which DNS to use, and what's to use and which root DNS servers to be used is a question for the system admin on the site which either hands out DHCP configs or manual configs.

p.s. There's a lot of rubbish in that newsforge article, for example:
"After switching to OpenDNS, [...] ping times were considerably lower,"...
ping times have nothing to do with DNS, it's purely a question of the physical network structure (and load) between you and where you ping. DNS is only involved in the translation from name to IP, which happens right at the beginning and how long that takes isn't particulately interesting - that's not why you're pinging.

What I understood is it will reduce the number of hops to reach the destination site.

Even they have configurations for mobile device. http://www.opendns.com/start/mobile.php

>What I understood is it will reduce the number of hops to reach the destination site.

There's just no way it can do that.. DNS does one simple function: Translate an FQDN (fully qualified domain name, e.g. "www.google.com") to an IP address (e.g. 216.239.59.104), after that you're done with DNS - the rest is, indeed must be, taken care of by the routers between your site (to be precise, the site of your access point) and the destination.

The only thing I can see that an alternative DNS system can do is to provide faster fqdn->IP translation, but as soon as your networking application passes the 'gethostbyname' or 'getaddrinfo' system calls then there's no more DNS lookup involved.

Think of it this way: You can actually split the two parts of your communication (DNS lookup/data transfer) manually, like so:
# host www.google.com
www.google.com CNAME www.l.google.com
www.l.google.com A 216.239.59.104
www.l.google.com A 216.239.59.103
www.l.google.com A 216.239.59.147
www.l.google.com A 216.239.59.99

(some IP addresses changed to aaa.bbb etc. below)
# traceroute -n 216.239.59.104
1 aaa.bbb.ccc.ddd 0.234 ms 0.238 ms 0.285 ms
2 eee.fff.ggg.hhh 0.576 ms 0.530 ms 0.525 ms
...
16 72.14.232.241 69.267 ms 69.407 ms 69.364 ms
17 216.239.49.114 71.284 ms 216.239.49.126 71.169 ms 72.061 ms
18 216.239.59.104 69.537 ms 69.632 ms 69.331 ms
#

The 'host' (or the old nslookup) command communicates with your DNS server. The 'traceroute -n' doesn't talk with any DNS at all, so whatever kind of DNS system you're using you'll just end up with an IP address that you can use with traceroute -n. It doesn't make a difference where that IP came from (indeed, it could come from your /etc/hosts file and the lookup would be faster than anything else).

There ARE ways to achieve more efficient package routing, and deploying that across the Internet would surely help.

For instance, I have a device from Hawking that prioritizes data packets on the fly. Really helps with multiplayer games and I understand it works well for VOIP too. Now, if every router on the internet had something similar implemented...

I use opendns on my internet tablet and it does make a difference. Not for ping times but for web page loading it is a very noticeable improvement. This is due to the fact that many web pages are comprised of many seperate elements (images, flash, text, frames etc...) that often come from seperate servers. speeding up DNS performance results in that single page loading faster because each element comprises a DNS lookup and a small improvement in each lookup leads to the entire page loading significantly faster. It is easy and straight forward to configure an IT to use open dns. You either need access to your DHCP server (I.E. your home wireless router) or you can configure your internet tablet to use opendns's servers for DNS while allowing your IT's IP address to be assigned automatically by your network if you don't have access to that networks DHCP config.

If you're finding DNS to be the cause of a significant performance degradation, you probably have a crappy ISP. DNS is designed to be cached (by intermediate servers and/or the end host). A cleaner solution would be to install your own DNS cache on your system/network. Why involve a 3rd party?

Routing can only be controlled by the network infrastructure, the end points don't have any control over how packets get sent from point A to point B.

QoS labeling and traffic shaping can improve the feel and effective utilization of a network, but that has nothing to do with DNS.

As far as I know, every modern browser has a built in DNS cache (and the OS may be providing one as well). When you load a new site, the browser should make one DNS request for the page, cache it, and then reuse the cached result for other linked content.

Sorry to resurrect this old thread, but you know how important it is to SEARCH, and I did.

I have started using Opendns (https://www.opendns.com/ instead of the Time Warner Cable dns and it seems to have improved my cable service significantly in the last three weeks. Specifically, it is not that infrequent in my area that the Internet goes down and yet I can play Internet chess, just not use my Internet browser! This seems to be because a DSN server has gone down, I guess.

There has been one major Internet crash in my area (Los Angeles northern area) in the last three weeks, but cable has always been kind of crappy here --this used to be Adelphia territory. So even with the one crash, I seem to have seen a real improvement.

It all boils down to that what opendns.com can be for you is to function as a backup DNS. It can't in any way improve on the networking itself (e.g. improve routing or reduce hop count, as was suggested earlier in this old thread).

If your ISP has an unreliable DNS then having an alternative ready is of course good, and that's what opendns can give you. However, I would also complain to the ISP..

The ISP is Time Warner Cable, and I have complained to them. They are sorry.