Of all the companies and services showcased at ISPCON Fall 2006, I can only think of a small handful that actually impressed me. One, in particular, is a company called OpenDNS, which has taken the complicated job of updating the building block of the Net, DNS.
What is DNS?
Along with being the basic building block of the Internet, DNS is the system that allows your browser to find a Web site. When the Internet was starting out, Web sites were identified by IP addresses. Instead of typing WebHostBlog.com, you would instead type 211.23.34.214. Unfortunately, IP addresses are hard to memorize and essentially make Internet browsing hard for the average user. DNS was built so that instead of typing outnumbers you would instead type out a name and that would link to the number.
DNS has made life a lot easier for Internet browsing, but the DNS system itself has undergone very little in means of change. Those same servers that ran DNS records of yesteryear are still running the DNS lookup tables of today. These servers, though state-of-the-art way back when are lacking in processor power and more importantly memory. The Internet of today includes millions of Web sites. The DNS lookup tables that house these Web sites’ web address information in most cases span multiple computers. When you browse the Internet through your ISP, your browser hops from one DNS server to the next trying to find the address you typed in.
What’s more. You can be using dialup or you could be using a T3 pipeline, either one really won’t make a huge difference in lookup speeds since the bulk of the work is done at the processor level of your ISP’s server.
DNS is also an unintelligent system. If you type something wrong your browser will still faithfully look up the address you typed in and will end up giving you the wrong size or an error page.
And you can just forget about it making julienne fry.
Faster, Smarter, Safer
The motto of OpenDNS makes a bold statement. “OpenDNS makes your Internet work better.” There are several areas for improvement on the current DNS system as described earlier. David Ulevitch, Founder and CEO of OpenDNS said it best when he said, “So basically, OpenDNS’ sole goal is to take the DNS which hasn’t changed in 20 years and improve on it. Not to radically or revolutionary change it, but to make the evolutionary steps we need to do, to improve things for end-users.”
OpenDNS’ plan for the evolution of DNS is three-fold. Essentially, update and optimize for faster record finding, make the DNS layer more intelligent, and finally block Internet abuse at the DNS layer.
Making the Internet Faster
There have been many ways of making the Internet a faster experience. Broadband connections, faster Web site servers, fewer Web sites per server, increased RAM on Web hosting computers, the use of better programming languages, improved picture compression techniques, and a lot more have all gone into making the Internet a faster place to surf. And yet, DNS lookup servers have been missing from the equation. Though not a bottleneck per se, a few simple updates could make the whole system run a lot smoother.
Instead of the hand-me-down servers common in ISPs, OpenDNS starts with quality servers and then adds a distributed caching system. Instead of having to bounce from one lookup table to the next trying to find the address you need, the Web site address request is sent rapidly through the OpenDNS cache.
Location is also important. OpenDNS houses DNS servers in several of the main Internet exchanges. The shorter the distance between you and the lookup servers the faster you can get to where you want to go.
All of this translates to a faster DNS look-up, which means a noticeable speed difference.
