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Quote:OpenDNS says its free address-lookup service makes Web sites load faster, and that it blocks malicious, data-thieving phishing schemes and other threats. Furthermore, the service corrects obvious typos in URLs, sending people to the site they intended to visit, it says.

To pay for it, though, the company serves up ads and a search page, instead of an error page, if the user enters a Web address that doesn't exist or can't be corrected. The approach is similar one used in an unpopular VeriSign service called Site Finder, which was pulled soon after its launch in 2003.

"I like the idea of improving performance, but the business model is the issue," said John Pescatore, an analyst at research firm Gartner. "Advertising on mistypes is a very iffy thing. VeriSign got a very negative reception, and I think the same is true here." ...

Quote:"A local, well-managed name server with a decent-sized cache will provide better performance, on average, than a remote name server with a huge cache," Liu said. "I also don't want to depend on the networks between me and the remote name server being up all the time."

Quote:There's controversy around OpenDNS. OpenDNS is a for-profit service (it makes money by serving ads on the pages it displays when you make a domain name typo it cannot resolve). Over-aggressive corrections could undermine legitimate, or semi-legitimate, businesses on the Web -- and who's to say if OpenDNS is an appropriate arbiter of what's right and what's not? Some people also doubt that a single company can run a speedy and robust DNS service (as opposed to the distributed network of ISPs, each running its own DNS). UIevitch maintains that if his service isn't run well and fairly, users will simply abandon it -- so he's got a big incentive to make his domain servers do the right thing, and fast...

I don't see any reason to go back to my ISP's default DNS, but neither has my online experience improved dramatically with OpenDNS . I'd recommend the service for people who find browsing the Web slow (it will help if the DNS server is the culprit) and for those who worry that people on their network might fall for phishing scams. But for many people, OpenDNS will improve the online experience only slightly...