Our dear Mac OS X loves to use DNS, for instance when browsing the internet every connection attempt is followed by a DNS lookup (as far as I know). There is not much caching being done on the local machine, therefore I had put this on my to-do list: Document the setup of a local DNS server on your own network that would efficiently cache most of the DNS requests to forego most of the slow internet DNS lookups.

I’m still struggling with parenthood and version 2 of the ISP in a box still has a problem somewhere which I’m sure I had solved but somehow due to all the attention loss I have forgotten what it was about.

When I read Matthew Mullenweg (of WordPress fame) blog entry about OpenDNS I was a bit sceptical. I wouldn’t think speed improvements where possible, the DNS provided by my ISP should be the quickest solution. But to my amazement there was a speed increase when I switched the DNS servers on my Mac. Not much but is was notable and that is enough for me, until I get my own DNS server I’m using OpenDNS.

The added bonus is they promise to prevent phishing and do spell checking. I haven’t had phishing emails for some time so I can’t tell you if that works but the spell checking is great. They correct the typo’s in the domain name you enter in your browser. Try it yourself and find out it is very easy to use they have the the settings you need to change on your local Mac or on your Airport well documented. The best thing it is all for free as well. Hope you like it as well as I did.