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Earthlink Offers Alternate DNS Without "Dead DNS"
Posted by
kdawson
on Mon Sep 18, 2006 11:37 AM
from the just-resolve-my-names dept.
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.
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EarthLink Establishes Their Own "Site Finder" 241 comments
Guppy06 writes "Last week, instead of a regular DNS error, EarthLink's DNS servers started to return a redirect to earthlink-help.net, a site that bears a close resemblance to VeriSign's much-maligned Site Finder, to their subscribers. According to their official blog at Earthling, "By presenting users with contextual help based upon the non-existent domain the user entered, we believe we are improving the EarthLink user experience with a system that will not interfere with other network processes." Most of the responses in said blog posting aren't positive."
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Islamic Clerics declare Fatwa against BLOCKQUOTE (Score:5, Funny)
The BLOCKQUOTE tag, as introduced with the HTML 2.0 specification in 1994, has been used on websites throughout the world to signify that the text contained within is a quotation from an external source. However, due to an inability for islamics to grow the fuck up and understand basic communicative syntax, they now believe it is their holy right to murder anyone they want to just because one person quoted someone else within context.
This antithesis of freedom is a common theme running throughout all islamic interaction with civilised society. Rampaging islamic mobs worldwide have burned effigies of Dave Raggett, creator of HTML, alongside effigies of President Bush and Pope Benedict XVI. Police measures are now in place to put everyone who ever had a Myspace page or Geocities account into hiding.
Inventor of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee, was unavailable for comment. Which is probably just as well as we don't want to get bombed by the raghead fuckwits just for quoting him.
umm (Score:3, Funny)
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I'm basically happy with it. I get 1.5/256k aDSL for $40, which is pretty pricey but it has flaked out for a total of 1 hour in 4 years. I've learned to avoid calling support, even for billing problems, unless it's worth wasting an hour and getting upset about. That's just never gone well.
Someday I'm going to migrate to a non-ISP-issued email account for good and just hop from cheapest to cheapest.
I miss my netcom shell account, I miss my
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Or just open a Gmail account.
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google.com/a [google.com]
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Re:umm (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Parent
I tried to use Earthlink (Score:3, Interesting)
When I ask if perhaps Earthlink could have contacted me to tell me this a couple weeks earlier, the person on the phon
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jwhois 66.218.65.224
[Querying whois.arin.net]
[whois.arin.net]
OrgName: Yahoo!
OrgID: YAOO
Address: 701 First Ave
City: Sunnyvale
StateProv: CA
PostalCode: 94089
Country: US
OpenDNS doesn't work for everyone (Score:2)
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I almost made that mistake of using OpenDNS as well. I used Level 3's servers instead.
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-david
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eg. I just sucessfully sent an email to eguhrguh@rgherhithg.cm - something that my mailer would normally have picked up, and if not then the email server beyond it.
It's based on the same fallacy that sitefinder was - that the world is the web. Never mind email, ftp, ssh, sip, etc. etc.
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I don't know, but maybe their default is to track which domain names were requested, but not by whom? After all, if they really don't keep records of who requested the domain name, there wouldn't be a privacy concern.
I have no reason to believe that what I just said is the case, but it's one obvious way that you could reconcile the two statements.
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We can't really build a profile on you.
Think about it: we don't even see the full URLs you visit. Consider software like the Google toolbar, yahool toolbar and stumbleupon. In fact, think of any toolbar product, including alexa and netcraft. They're all in much better positions to build profiles than we are.
Just, you know, pointing that out.
-david
But wait! (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh wait, no they're not. They *still* dont get what's wrong with what they're doing.
Re:But wait! (Score:4, Insightful)
1. Make a fuss and become a potential target.
2. Complain amongst friends, and pray for a PR disaster that gets it shut down.
I think the bulk have opted for door #2.
Parent
OpenDNS is no better (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 [opendns.com]: "...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 [opendns.com], 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.
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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.
Actually, AFAIK, there isn't a way to turn off the "search results" page. If you look for a domain that doesn't exist, it directs y
The problem is the search pages (Score:3, Interesting)
I.e., what's desired is if you type in a bad address, you get a "domain name not found" error, not a search page.
Those search pages are called a "feature" to some, but to many people -- myself included -- they're just unwelcome advertising and an obnoxious waste of bandwidth.
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I know, I'm not saying the "search pages" are a feature. The person I responding to claimed you could turn off the search pages, and I was saying that AFAIK, you can't. Read one of the other responses and it seems to be someone from OpenDNS claiming that you can, in fact, disable the search pages, but when I tried it, it didn't work.
That's all. I'm not saying you should use the service or not. Just OpenDNS says you can disable the search pages, and it didn't work for me.
Re:OpenDNS is no better (Score:4, Informative)
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
Parent
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When these people then go to a machine without such a feature, it will hinder them greatly.
Aside from the fact that most common mis-spellings of popular domains have already been registered by scam artists anyway.
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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
Less savy people will not know (Score:4, Insightful)
Why do you think AOL is still in business? If people knew about their options, a lot of the large providers would go out of biz.
editors (Score:2)
i dont think that begs the question at all. Slashdot so called editors strike a gain.
Moo (Score:3, Funny)
Let's make DNS a wiki!
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That's funny (Score:4, Insightful)
Strange, it sounds to me like it's time for Earthlink users to find a new provider. I know sometimes there are very few options for broadband in an area, but last I checked there were plenty of dialup companies still competing and about.
Ehhh... (Score:2)
But as for using "OpenDNS," my main objection is that I'm already paying for a DNS server with the cost of my subscription!. Why should I have to jury-rig this work-around, one that is only marginally less distasteful than earthlink-help.net, when I should be getting the Real Thing(TM) with the cost of my subscription (with support, thankyouverymuch)?
The only reason I'm still here is that my parents
No such thing as a dead domain (Score:3, Informative)
That includes when it comes from OpenDNS nameservers, which is just another service that lies to you about DNS query results.
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The interesting thing about the phrase is that both the accepted and modern commonly used version can easily be distinguished from each other. That is, the original version is an adjective that could easily be replace with "sucks": "Your argument begs the question." The newer "incorrect" version is followed by a question, which seems more natural given the english words used. I personally find misusing it a bit irritating, but the original phase in actually sort of a bad literal translation from latin.
No, it does not "beg the question", it raises it. (Score:2)
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The latter would be an informed propagation of ignorance. Well, no, it's no longer ignorance since the phrase makes much more sense in the newer usage.
Perhaps we could call it an informed, willful attempt to patch a critically broken language.
---
On the other ha
wait wait wait.... (Score:3, Funny)
Someone get me a glass of water. I think I'm going to faint and fall off of my segway!
Do You Say Wed-Ness-Day? (Score:2, Funny)
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Oh yeah, and get off my lawn!
Not until you can say it in Proto-Indo-European.
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Ummmm, "you're avoiding the question", "you're dodging the question", "you're not answering the question", "you're making a circular argument", "your logic is circular"... These days, saying "you beg the question" makes you sound uptight and old fashioned. In fact, I have a hard time saying it without feigning a Haaaavaaaad type accent, or at least upper-crusty British. Just picture it:
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Uh... (Score:2)
1) Post a question asking what "Dead DNS" is
2) Get a response
3) Watch that person's response get modded up
4)
5) PROFIT!
Let me guess - your fingers are broken and you couldn't look it up, either? Or were you just trying to insult me?
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Mods, that's a Pulp Fiction quote... this is not a GNAA troll.
Thanks, I'll never be able to read about DNS without thinking of that scene now... maybe you are a troll? You've definitely seen the movie too many times. :)
Paid links on the search engine (Score:2)