LiggySasha;409854 Wrote: > Then I did a bit of playing around and found the problem is Comcasts DNS > addresses. Seems to be a lot of chatter on the internet about how > crappy they are!
Most ISPs tend to overload their DNS servers. Mine sure does! > So I found OpenDNS and used their address instead... and it works!!! > Thank goodness! > > And even better.... Squeezebox can connect to Squeezecenter!!! So > happy!!! Good to hear! :-) > So my last question (I promise!)... is there any security risk or danger > using an open DNS rather than Comcast? I don't want to be exposing > myself to anything/one nasty! There shouldn't be...OpenDNS has been around a while and uses their service as a business while your Internet provider views DNS servers as a waste of money - something they have to provide and reluctantly do. OpenDNS is at least as secure as your ISP's DNS, probably more so - if it's compromised, OpenDNS's future as a business is in serious jeopardy. That's the core of their business. The only security threat posed by the DNS system as far as I'm aware of is "DNS poisoning", where the bad guys redirect DNS lookups to sites they control. DNS converts IP addresses (not very human friendly) to website addresses (much more human friendly). So when you type: www.google.com into your browser, your computer asks the DNS server "I'm looking for www.google.com, what's it's IP address?" The DNS server responds: 208.67.217.231 So then your computer asks your router to send a request to 208.67.217.231 and Google serves you up a web page. If the bad guys manage to compromise the DNS server by poisoning it, your request of www.google.com could resolve to 4.2.2.1, controlled by the bad guys! (Don't worry, 4.2.2.1 is actually a DNS server out there so it's harmless!) Tip: you can enter an IP address directly into your browser, but it's unsafe to do so. You never know where you'll end up. You can actually type 208.67.217.231 into your browser directly, Google should come up. Your computer isn't doing any DNS lookup if you do this and will serve up the website a tiny bit faster as a result, but remembering those numbers is harder than www.google.com, isn't it? However only do this if you're absolutely sure that the IP and website address match. The only downside I can see to using OpenDNS is that it's outside of your ISP's network and is subject to a bit more lag time and Internet congestion. Your ISP's DNS servers, located inside their own network, should be physically close to you with good connections in between and they would be fast if your ISP didn't try to cram as many users as possible onto as few servers as possible. -- Mark Lanctot Current: SB2, Transporter, Boom (PQP3 - late beta), SBC (early beta) Stored: Boom (PQP1 - early beta) Sold: SB3, Duet ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Mark Lanctot's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=2071 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=61709 _______________________________________________ discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss
