Ultimate Gadgetry: What To Do When Your Internet’s DNS Service Goes Wonky
Sunday, December 21, 2008 - John Greene
This edition of Ultimate Gadgetry is a bit late because we’ve had a spot of weather in my part of the world (meaning that I’m working from my home instead of trudging through the snow to the workplace) and my provider has decided that Christmastime is the best time to adjust their DNS servers. So, emailing files to people, getting online to catch the action at UltimateBet’s tables, even trying to watch a YouTube video carries a success rate that’s notably less than going all-in with 7-8 offsuit. (My wife, typically, was more upset that she couldn’t access CSI: Miami on Netflix Watch Instantly through the XBox versus my problems, which might keep us from paying our mortgage.)
DNS, according to Wikipedia, is “a hierarchical naming system for computers, services, or any resource participating in the internet. It associates various information with domain names assigned to such participants.” It’s basically your computer’s switchboard to the rest of the internet; every computer online has a number assigned to it and it converts your typing “Google.com” to the numbers that the internet understands for routing your connection. If the DNS server is acting up, it makes it difficult for a lot of things to connect properly. My provider had told me several times that they were “working on it” and while I can go to a coffee shop and do a great deal of my work, I still prefer sitting at my desk in my house with my tea and having control over my stereo, which is virtually guaranteed to not play Maroon 5 or Nickelback when I least expect it. So, I did a little research and came across OpenDNS.com.
I’m not a super-technical guy: more gadget-oriented (hence this column) than engineering-oriented, so I was really happy to see that they explain everything at the average person’s level instead of going straight for the technobabble. I had a good connection up and running within a few seconds, and can for the first time in weeks get to my GMail and FTP accounts with no problems at all. If you’ve ever had issues with connections taking longer than they should, or sporadic outages related only to certain websites, this could fix them without having to endure an hour-long phonecall to somebody reading Action Items off a screen.
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Tags: DNS, internet, internet connections, online, openDNS, Ultimate Gadgetry
