Adding OpenDNS Servers

This tutorial was written because my $50 a month Comcast High Speed Internet was rendered useless for several days because they were having problems with their name servers. Basically, a name server allows www.google.com (something we can remember) to be turned into 216.239.39.99 (the address a computer needs).

OpenDNS is a project to create publicly accessible name servers that anyone can use. Your ISP will provide a DNS or two for you and we will want to keep using those since they are on your network and will be much faster than the OpenDNS servers.

This tutorial is for Windows 2000 (but may possibly work for other versions of Windows).

To find your ISP's DNS servers:

• Click on "Start" -> "Run..."
• Type "cmd" in the textbox and click the OK button
• When the command prompt opens, type "ipconfig /all"

C:\>ipconfig /all

Somewhere in that list will be "DNS Servers" (it will be under "Local Area Connection" if you have a cable modem or DSL). There will almost always be two.

DNS Servers . . . . . . . . . . . : 68.87.66.196
                                    68.87.64.196

To add the OpenDNS servers:

• Click on "Start" -> "Settings" -> "Control Panel"
• Doubleclick on "Network and Dial-up Connections"
• Doubleclick on "Local Area Connection" (or whatever one you want to change)
• Click the Properties button
• Doubleclick on "Internet Protocol (TCP/IP)"
• Select "Use the following DNS server addresses:"

Now we will type in the addresses from your ISP that we got above:

Preferred DNS Server: 68.87.66.196
Alternate DNS Server: 68.87.64.196

• Click the Advanced... button
• Click the Add button
• Add an IP address from the Tier 2 section of OpenDNS's Public Servers
• Click the Add button
• Repeat if desired (I recommend adding two or three)
• Click the OK button on each window to apply the changes