This mini tutorial starts by using OpenDNS, and then the DNS service of Google.
Note
More details about OpenDNS?
That Wikipédia page gives more information about that free (but questionable) service.
This (French) blog post is quite aggressive against OpenDNS, with quite valid arguments. As an extremely short sum-up, you should not use OpenDNS.
To start using OpenDNS, you just need to specify these addresses as additional DNS servers.
| For IPv4: | 208.67.222.222, 208.67.220.220, 208.67.222.220, 208.67.220.222 |
|---|---|
| For IPv6: | 2620:0:ccc::2, 2620:0:ccd::2 |
More details on the procedure needed to start using an alternative DNS provider can be found here (thanks to developers.Google.com). An other tutorial explaining precisely here (for Windows 7).
To check that you use indeed the OpenDNS servers, you just need to go on that web-page www.OpenDNS.com/welcome.
Or you can test this from the command line (with the dig command):
You can also check how the OpenDNS servers protect you against fishing and "bad" Internet web-sites, by going to the (safe) web-page www.InternetBadGuys.com (the DNS request to OpenDNS required to know where to look up the www.InternetBadGuys.com page will be interpreted as dangerous, and so you will be redirected to that "nicer" page).
Mainly because I wanted to have one easy-to-find web-page where to quickly find the IPv4 (and IPv6) addresses of the OpenDNS (and Google DNS) servers, in order to be able to quickly copy/paste them when I configure a new Wi-Fi (or Ethernet) connexion on my personal laptop.
Now it's done!
Google also offers a free, non-restrictive, and open-to-anyone DNS service:
| For IPv4: | 8.8.8.8, 8.8.4.4 |
|---|---|
| For IPv6: | 2001:4860:4860::8888, 2001:4860:4860::8844 |
Or you can test this from the command line (with the dig command):
Note
More information?
As always, more details can be found here on Wikipédia, or on the official web-page on developers.Google.com.
Google DNS is supposed to be quicker and more efficient, but we do not really care in fact (except if you are on a really quick network, the DNS requests velocity cannot be the limiting bottleneck for your web browsing).
But that free service is supposed to not modify the domain names space, contrarily to other services of that kind; and it is known to be quite safe.
Our Linuxian friends can also use a resolv.conf, and for example that one on www.chaz6.com/files/resolv.conf can help, or by following these explanations. Some extra explanations are also here on theos.in or here on die.net, or as always on Wikipédia (yes, I like Wikipédia!).