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Earthlink Offers Alternate DNS Without "Dead DNS"

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the just-resolve-my-names dept.

Joshua Flory writes, "In response to the story about Earthlink and their version of 'Site Finder', I learned today that Earthlink has provided alternate DNS servers that will remain outside of their 'dead DNS' service. However, this is a completely unsupported service, which begs the question, WHY? Everyone can gain access to public DNS servers, or create their own. The point is that people wanted DNS servers supported by EL that do not include this dead DNS service." Sounds like it's time for Earthlink users to check out OpenDNS.com... they make it easy to turn off the bad-URL behavior.

10 of 136 comments (clear)

  1. IT DOES NOT BEG THE QUESTION. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    It might raise the question, but it certainly does not beg the question.

  2. Re:umm by aliendisaster · · Score: 3, Informative

    Sprint uses Earthlink. I have Sprint DSL and it comes with Earthlink's services (which I never use).

    --
    Freedom is a state of mind. A mind is a state of being. Stay the fuck out of my mind and my being. - Corporate Avenger
  3. OpenDNS is no better by sidb · · Score: 4, Informative

    OpenDNS is not a solution to this problem those with dynamic IPs, which includes most Earthlink customers (like me). By default, they do exactly the same thing Earthlink does: from their webpage: "...when we can't fix your typo we take you to a page with a set of search results." They do allow you to turn that behavior off on their prefs page, but only if you have a static IP. And I somehow doubt that there isn't a speed hit going off your ISPs own network for all your DNS queries, anyway.

    The correct solution, of course, is to ditch Earthlink. Or in my case, not renew with them the next time I change my service -- unfortunately, changing now would be expensive. Until then, I'm going with Earthlink's secret, unbroken servers over OpenDNS.

    1. Re:OpenDNS is no better by davidu · · Score: 2, Informative

      Hey all,

      I, with some other highly-clued folks, run OpenDNS -- maybe I can help answer some questions. We're going to be rolling out some code at the beginning of October to deal with dynamic IPs. I think you'll find it elite.

      Ping me an email at ceo [at] opendns.com if you want to help us beta test.

      I'm happy to answer other questions too, as most of you know. :-)

      Best,

      -david

      --

      # Hack the planet, it's important.
    2. Re:OpenDNS is no better by davidu · · Score: 3, Informative

       
      So if you have typo protection enabled, and you type googl.ecom, it figures out that you meant google.com and directs you there. If it can't figure out the domain you intended, it sends you to their search page. If you disable the typo correction, then it just sends you to the search page immediately.


      That is absolutely false. If you disable typo correction you will never see the search page. The search page is intended to help users so if you turn off typo correction, you turn off that page. That's okay with us. You will see NXDOMAIN (RCODE=3) responses from our server. Like I've pointed out before, we're technologists and we're building functional and interoperable stuff here.

      Not to toot my horn or get all "Slashdot's lame" on this thread but I've been here a long time and it's clear to me that most of the users who posted on slashdot when we launched didn't even read our site or understand what it is that we're doing. Can we not make that mistake again?
       
      We're putting control and choice into users hands where there was none before. It's a fact of life that ISPs are doing this. They should be working with us, just like users are. We look at this as giving you a dashboard and all the knobs and buttons you need to manage DNS. DNS is the root (no pun intended) of a ton of applications and services so why wouldn't you want to manage it just like you would a firewall or anti-spam service?

      Best,
      David
      --

      # Hack the planet, it's important.
  4. Re:OpenDNS doesn't work for everyone by pixr99 · · Score: 3, Informative

    FYI, a few weeks back, David Ulevitch blogged that this is no longer a problem.

  5. Re:umm by Puggs · · Score: 2, Informative

    Or get your own domain, and point that at gmail ;-)
    google.com/a

  6. Re:umm by theodicey · · Score: 4, Informative

    I do, as an alternative to supporting AT&T's illegal wiretapping and internet traffic monitoring.

    They cost about $2 more a month for DSL + phone + long distance. The cost difference isn't really their fault, the FCC allowed AT&T and the phone monopolies to charge whatever they wanted for line access. But they make it up in other ways, like with 500 minutes of free long distance

    Also, Earthlink's DSL service (provided by Covad) is faster than AT&T's was.

  7. Re:Dead DNS? -Answer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    This is what Earthlink calls their service that returns a search page for your NX domain lookups. If you read either of the blogs linked in the article, you would find that out yourself.

  8. No such thing as a dead domain by kindbud · · Score: 2, Informative

    It either exists, or it does not exist. If it doesn't exist, the only correct answer is NXDOMAIN. Anything else is some protocol other than DNS. There is no DEAD_DOMAIN_REDIRECT_TO_AD answer defined in the protocol. If the domain is not in the TLD servers, any answer but NXDOMAIN is a lie.

    That includes when it comes from OpenDNS nameservers, which is just another service that lies to you about DNS query results.

    --
    Edith Keeler Must Die