openDNS: not great but progress nevertheless
Maybe I’m the only domain name investor who thinks OpenDNS is a good thing. I think it’s good because it leaves a path open for future improvements to the DNS system we all know and love. First some debunking….
The widely touted benefits and exaggerated blogger claims sound like a load of hooey to me. Spamhaus inntegration sounds OK, but this will not change the balance of power in the war against spam. This will help deter phishing attacks, but is by no means anywhere near the end of the story. It’s just not that simple. And yes they will serve many, many ads on pages for not found domains. Not all that different from Verisign’s old Site Finder plan, except as somebody pointed out people opt in to this service.
Correcting typos is not a big deal. Some domain investors seem to think it’s a threat to their typo domains; it’s not. We’re only talking about correcting the domain suffix here; correcting anything else is not feasible. I also do NOT think there’s a security issue, although some would suggest there’s a problem there waiting to be discovered. But it’s also not that useful, since we’re only talking about the simplest TLD corrections.
The big win here is going to be user specified options. When users are able to toggle options beside simple typo-fixing and phishing warnings then there’s some real value. If DNS behavior can be specified on a per-program basis via an API then we’ve suddenly got something MUCH more useful than the old DNS.
August 8th, 2006 at 3:01 pm
[…] OK so I’m following Kevin Murphy’s lead again, but I’m intrigued by the nation of Cameroon’s inevitable rise to type-in traffic stardom. I’m referring to their change in policy to allow any requests for any unspecified .cm domains to resolve to a PPC page that they can make money from. I remember the outcry when Verisign tried it, but as pointed out Cameroon does not fall under any jurisdiction that has any power to make them stop. Even OpenDNS can not help here, since HTTP requests to .cm domains may in fact be legitimate. Well OK, I may never have gone to a .cm site before today, but the point remains valid. […]