OpenDNS

[johnridley]

Thanks to a mention in isherempress's LJ, I went and checked out OpenDNS. Seems like a good idea, especially since Charter is doing the damnable redirect of all failed DNS queries to their own search page. I really dislike this behavior.

I put the servers in my router's static DNS entries, but just for future reference, that wasn't enough; it still put the ISP's first DNS in as the 3rd DNS server. Neither leaving it 0 nor duplicating #2 kept it from picking that up.

Finally from the DD-WRT forum came the suggestion to run this command on the router, which fixed it up:

nvram set wan_get_dns=208.67.222.222 208.67.220.220
nvram commit

I don't know if it'll survive a reboot. I blew my uptime by messing around with the cables down there, but I'll hold off the power cycle test until when I won't bother anyone.

Comments

[c0nsumer.livejournal.com]

Can you just stand up a copy of bind somewhere locally? Just allow recursion (selectively, of course, if it is on a public interface) and have a root.hints set up and you'll have a local, caching DNS all your own.

[johnridley.livejournal.com]

I'm not interested in looking for extra work. I just want this to work.

If I do any goofing around with local DNS it would probably be to do some abomination like TCP over DNS. I don't have a lot of use for it but it would be fun to play with; it reminds me of some of the TCP over telnet, or KA8Q packet drivers under DOS that I played with back in the day.

[c0nsumer.livejournal.com]

Ah, yeah. That makes sense.

You've got your ham license too? I've been thinking of picking up a TNC or one of the Kenwood HTs with a built-in one just to... well... see what I can play with.

[johnridley.livejournal.com]

It didn't survive reboot, it went back to the ISP DNS in #3. There's an option for inserting that command into the startup script, so I'll try that.

[backrubbear.livejournal.com]

Just wait until they start nabbing all DNS queries not destined for their own servers and answering anyway...

BTW, I think you meant ka9q.