All Better Now

…apparently. My internet connection, that is. In fact, I may need to call my ISP’s service number to cancel a service call. I put a little thought into it and asked myself why no slowdowns on email send/receive while navigating web pages was horrifically slow all of a sudden. Hmmm… OK, told my router to stop using my ISP’s DNS servers and go back to OpenDNS. Voilà! I know not if others have experienced DNS problems with the ISP’s servers, but I ought to at least let ’em know, eh? (Besides, if folks use other DNS servers, it’ll take some load off the ISP’s servers, ya think? ;-))

Well, perhaps I’ll hold off until tomorrow a.m., since the service man isn’t scheduled until Wednesday afternoon. See if this holds up for a day or so.

Nice to have my connection working properly again, though. You might give thought to checking out OpenDNS. Getting the biggest bang for your buck with the service requires a (free) registration and allows you to have several levels (including a degree of specificity) of filtering. I chose to have OpenDNS filter out obvious phishing sites, but other options are available, including some that would enforce many workplace acceptable use policies, e.g.,

opendns-filtering

(Yeh, all this is probably my fault anyway. I had been using OpenDNS and had great success with it but had switched back to the ISP’s DNS servers and… for some reason sometime this weekend, that just went wonky. Of course I’ll look into that, but I’m perfectly pleased just to have things working now. Moral: if it ain’t broke LEAVE IT ALONE *heh*)

3 Replies to “All Better Now”

  1. Commenting on my own post. (How about a chorus of “I’m All Alone in the World” from Mr Magoo’s Christmas Carol? *heh*)

    Apparently, the remote tech sees some upstream problems on my line on the cable company’s equipment so the service call’s still on despite my restoration of snappy browsing. Nice to have ’em committed to good service.

  2. OpenDNS? I’d heard of it, but not really seen much information about it. I’ve switched my router to use it. I really like the filtering feature, since it looks like I’ll be able to block a lot of objectionable content without having to build massive lists of blocked IP addresses and domains on my firewall by hand.

    I’ll still use the firewall’s block lists, but it looks like OpenDNS has a more extensive list than I do. Maybe this will keep the kids from downloading keyloggers and viruses as often as they do.

    1. *heh* I stuck around ALL DAY because I got conflicting messages about when the cable service guy would be here to check the S/N issue the remote tech said was upstream of me. Of course, “our” tech is on vacation, so the guy that came didn’t have the equipment to make that check and… looks like another call. He checked inside and all my wiring and such is fine (of course :-)). Meanwhile, me, here all day, cooling my heels. What to do, what to do? Why,I can make a HUGE mess cleaning out garage boxes, sorting, throwing out trash, etc. and… need to rush to get it cleaned up before my Wonder Woman walks in the door… *heh*

      Always making trouble for myself.

      But oh, yeh, that OpenDNS stuff is great. 🙂

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