I’ve got 3 kids ranging from 10 to 15 years old. All of them are competent computer users therefore I need to protect them and control them when they’re online. All of the computers in the house have Zone Alarm Security Suite installed which provides spyware protection, virus scanning, firewall, and content filtering (along with a few other features). Recently I’ve become disenchanted with Zone Alarm Security Suite and have begun exploring other options with a focus on content filtering. One possible option I discovered is OpenDNS.

What is OpenDNS?

OpenDNS is a domain name system (a.k.a. domain name server) alternative to the default DNS service provided by your ISP (Internet Service Provider). OpenDNS claims its alternative DNS service can protect you from phishing sites along with providing categorical filtering options. And, if you only want to filter a few specific sites, then you can do that too by creating a custom blacklist.

What you get with OpenDNS

An OpenDNS account is free and easy to set up. The site provides easy to follow instructions for changing the DNS settings for a single computer or for all the computers on your home network by editing your router’s DNS settings. Once you’ve adjusted your DNS settings you can enable statistics collection and use the online tools from your account dashboard to view information such as the most frequently visited sites, and which sites are getting blocked (for complete details on what you get, visit features section of the OpenDNS web site).

My thoughts on OpenDNS thus far

So far I’m very happy with OpenDNS. I was able to quickly set up an account, update my router’s DNS settings and enable adult content filtering and statistics collection. These quick changes allowed me to turn off Zone Alarm Security Suite content filtering on each machine in the house and start filtering content from a single location.

The statistics feature is nice. Unfortunately the “Domains report” has been temporarily disabled while they make report infrastructure improvements. On the other hand, the “Blocked sites” report is fully functional and its providing some very interesting results. I’ve come across 2 adult oriented sites in the list that I believe were ads embedded in unblocked sites. Unfortunately, I don’t recall visiting a site where some of the ads were missing. Needless to say, I’m still investigating this issue. I want to make sure my theory is correct and that someone in the house isn’t trying to surf to locations they shouldn’t go.

Overall I haven’t noticed any performance problems by using an alternative DNS. One potential problem, however, is that if my router is recycled and gets a new dynamically assigned IP address, then I’ll have to log into OpenDNS and update my network setting. My DNS will work even if I don’t update my network settings but my custom content filtering options won’t be activate till I update my account settings. I believe there are software solutions for my router (Linksys) that can solve this problem, but I’m still investigating those options at the moment (I’ll post about my research if I find a solution).

OpenDNS worth a try

If you’d like to filter content from a single location for an entire household of computers, and don’t want to load custom software on each machine, then you should take a serious look at OpenDNS. It’s a free option that requires nothing more than a simple password protected account. Worse case, if you don’t like it, you can always disable it and return to your default DNS server settings.

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