OpenDNS For Your Home Network

I’ve been using OpenDNS on my home router for a long time but have never, until now, used the advanced features it has to offer. For those of you with children who are now surfing this new wave called the internet, then OpenDNS would be perfect for you and your children. But, it’s not just for parents; it has quite a few other features to enable that will help filter out any phishing scams or other malicious sites.

If you are not familiar with OpenDNS, then go here:

http://www.opendns.com/

To put it simple, it’s an alternate DNS server you can input into your home router’s (and I pray that all of you reading this that have broadband have a home network router) DNS settings instead of your ISP’s DNS. If you go to the above site and select Home Network at the bottom, it will explain easily how to configure your home router to use OpenDNS.

Once you configure your router to start using OpenDNS, create a free account with them, download the OpenDNS utility and install. Then go back to your account settings on the site and start setting up your network. I’m not exactly sure if the utility is really necessary as its only function is to notify OpenDNS when your external IP address has changed.

I really do encourage you, dear reader, to use this, especially if you are a parent. It enforces safe browsing without you having to be conscious of it all the time. For those of you that are a little more tech savvy, it basically has some proxy filter enabled when you set OpenDNS as your DNS server and create an account but all the proxy filtering is done on all their DNS servers.

I don’t have it included in the photos below but you can even create a custom message that will be displayed when a page has been blocked and a way for your network clients to email you the site they are trying to visit so that you can mark the site safe in your OpenDNS settings, if you so desire. Just like an anti-virus being needed on a Windows machine, this is just as important, if not more so.

If any of you have any questions about this, feel free to email me.

Below are a few photos of some of my basic account settings to show you what can be set and how powerful it can be.