15/01/2012 2 Comments
In the computer network term, Domain Name System (DNS) is used to resolve the host name into an IP address. E.g. you open your browser and you want to browse google.com. Once you typed in google.com into you browser, the DNS will start its job. The DNS will send a DNS request to the DNS server, it requests the IP address of the google.com to the DNS server. It was merely like your computer asking the DNS server “Hi DNS server, I need to go to google.com, could you tell me what is the IP address of google.com ?”. Then, the DNS server will reply, “Hi there, the IP address of google.com is 188.8.131.52.” Thus, after your computer knew what is the IP address of google.com, it know where to go.
Normally, the DNS server addresses is automatically provided by the ISP. Thus, the ISP could control some websites that they want to block. They could control which website that you can go into and which website that is restricted. Some of the common blocked websites are porn sites, torrent site, and warez sites. Even though, this feature offers good things. But, sometimes you do not want to be restricted.
One of the trick to be unrestricted is by simply use another DNS server. There are a lot of parties that offering the DNS services, such as OpenDNS and Google. Some of those providers will charge you for the services. While, if you want to use a reliable and free DNS service, Google OpenDNS really will do. If you would like to know further about Google OpenDNS, you should check their official site here.
Advantages of using Google OpenDNS are:-
- Totally FREE.
- Speed up your browsing experience.
- Improve security by preventing several attacks such as Denial-of-Service (DOS) attacks and DNS cache poisoning.
- Gain access to the websites that is blocked by your ISP.
FYI, Google OpenDNS addresses are 184.108.40.206 and 220.127.116.11.
If you want to use Google OpenDNS you could either set it up on your computer’s network configuration or on your router directly. If you just set it up on your computer, that means only your computer alone that will gain the advantages of using the Google OpenDNS. While, if you set it up on your router’s configuration, every single computer that is connected to the router will also gain the advantage of using Google OpenDNS. Thus, if you have hundreds of computer that is connected to the router, all computer will automatically use the Google OpenDNS as their DNS server, but it only applicable if the DHCP is enabled.
In this post, I will specifically talk about how to configure the Google OpenDNS on the Innacomm W3400V routers.
- Ensure that you were connected to the router.
- Open a web browser and go to the router’s management console, the default address is http://192.168.1.1.
- Log in to the router’s management console by using tmadmin credentials.
- Go to Advanced Setup > DNS > DNS Server.
- Tick on the Use the following Static DNS IP address.
- Fill in the Google OpenDNS address on the Primary and Secondary DNS server fields.
- Then click Save/Apply.