November 1, 2006, 2:26 pm
A Faster Web–for Free
Is it just me, or are the freebies starting to blossom once again on the Web? Feels like it’s 1999 all over again.
I’ve got yet another great free one for you today, and it’s a doozie. I read about it in PC World, and couldn’t believe it: a service that purports to speed up your broadband Internet connection. It’s called Open DNS.
Works great, at least for me. Once I plugged the Open DNS addresses into my router, the wait time for a complex Web page went from 3-4 seconds down to 1-2, on both my Macs and PC’s.
In short, Open DNS works by caching a key phase of Web-page requests (namely, DNS requests) from its thousands of users, so that the site you want is blasted to you in a fraction of a second.
There’s no fee, no software to install, you don’t give them any information about yourself, and you don’t have to do anything different once you change your router’s DNS server addresses. (Sounds technical, but the site walks you through the instructions.) As a bonus, Open DNS intercepts phishing scams and corrects Web-address typos, sparing you those headaches. (The typo-correcting feature is where Open DNS plans to make its money; read the site to learn the whole plan.)
My wife and I are totally loving the new speed. Don’t tell Open DNS, but we even would have paid for it.
David Pogue
New York Times
Link: Open DNS
