DNS outages happen everywhere, from Italy to Illinois. And when they do, we can count on people taking to Twitter via their smart phones, to vent, find out what’s going on, and learn how they can get back online (thanks to us!).
We love helping frustrated people set up OpenDNS during these DNS outages. But one thing we discovered is that for the less-than-technical people amongst us, simply saying “use 208.67.222.222 & 208.67.220.220” isn’t enough. People don’t know what those numbers are, or where to look on their computer or router to change them. That’s why we’ve created a new mini-site; you can find it at use.opendns.com or http://208.69.38.205/.
Why are we making it accessible via both an IP and a URL? Because if your DNS is down, we want you to be able to access the instructions via your computer’s browser. Having an IP address means no matter what’s happening with your DNS, you can get to the site.
The next time there’s a DNS outage, we’ll head to Twitter as we normally do, to act as a resource and problem solver for those without DNS. And, thanks to this new page, it will be easier than ever to get OpenDNS set up, even for those who’ve never heard the term DNS before.
But our hope is that we won’t be the only ones. Our hope is that you’ll bookmark http://208.69.38.205/ and that the next time you hear that there’s a DNS outage, you can be a resource for your friends. Text them, call them, tweet at them — let them know it’s easy to get back online and it’s simple to get safer, faster, smarter and more reliable Internet — all that’s needed is to set up OpenDNS.
