OpenDNS failing on Slingshot (04)

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dconnell

6 posts

Wannabe Geek

#1001861 9-Mar-2014 19:56

I have successfully configured OpenDNS with Slingshot.
I use OpenDNS for family safety and have found it to be a good solution because it protects every device attached to my home Network from Laptop to iPhone.

I have found the impact on performance to be negligible. This is a subjective opinion. I could run Wireshark to check.
DNS lookup results are cached in Windows for a period of time, which also mitigates the performance impact.

When I first configured OpenDNS, it worked for a few hours, no problem, but then the static IP Addresses that I entered got automatically deleted.
I called Slingshot, but they saud my configuration was unsupported. I believe that the NetComm router is somehow calling home, downloading its configuration and reapply its defaults. initially, I though that this was just DHCP, but I also changed the Admin password, and this change also got reset and this definitely is not a behaviour of DHCP.

I therefore upgraded my NB304N router to the latest firmware. I downloaded and installed: GAN5.CZ56T-B-NC.AU-R1B033.EN_upgrade

I first backed up my configuration using the the Admin GUI at http://192.161.1.1
I did not need the backup in the end. It was just in case.

After the upgrade, there was a new menu item in the Admin GUI called: Management -> TR-069 Client
I changed the URL from: http://acs.callplus.co.nz/ to some bad URL such as: http://acs.callplus.co.nzq/
This (I think) prevents the modem/router from calling home and updating my config.

It is also possible that it was simply the firmware upgrade which solved the problem.

Anyway, my OpenDNS configuration has now stayed in place. So fingers crossed, I now have a good FREE solution for Family Safety,
which to be honest works much better than the Microsoft Solution which I was using.
The problem with the MS solution is that user can't be Local Admin. My daughter wants local Admin for installing stuff.
Also the MS solution does not cover iPhones and Linux or any other type of device connected to my router.

myfullflavour

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#1001871 9-Mar-2014 20:12

dconnell: I have found the impact on performance to be negligible.

Over half our networks Google traffic is served from our local cache only a few ms away. If a customer uses any other DNS, they'll no longer be served via our cache and the traffic will come from Sydney.

Getting full speed (up to 100Mbps) downloads on local cache transfers is a lot more likely than traffic coming from outside the network.

freitasm

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#1001925 9-Mar-2014 22:52

dconnell: I have found the impact on performance to be negligible. This is a subjective opinion. I could run Wireshark to check.
DNS lookup results are cached in Windows for a period of time, which also mitigates the performance impact.

The problem is not the DNS lookup going overseas. The problem is that much of the content consumed in New Zealand these days come from a mix of local caches (Akamai, Fastly), australian caches (Amazon AWS, Cloudflare) and Google servers hosted by ISP (Google searches, YouTube).

Anytime you use a DNS that is not from your ISP you will lose visibility of the in-house Google servers and will reach for US-based CDNs instead of local ones.

Overall, in New Zealand, using a third party DNS will impact performance at some point.

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dconnell

6 posts

Wannabe Geek

#1002360 10-Mar-2014 20:39

OK. Thanks for the correction. Have you any other suggestions for Family safety?
The OpenDNS service seams such an elegant solution.
It is a shame Slingshot does not provide something equivalent.

freitasm

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#1002378 10-Mar-2014 20:52

If you are using Windows then you have built-in Family Safety, which you as administrator can control by creating a standard user account and managing it through your control panel:

Other platforms have similar software.

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dconnell

6 posts

Wannabe Geek

#1002429 10-Mar-2014 21:36

Yup. I've tried the Microsoft solution. It has two major drawbacks as described in my first post.
OpenDNS makes so much sense - if only the service was adopted here in NZ by the ISPs.

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dconnell

6 posts

Wannabe Geek

#1002449 10-Mar-2014 22:15

I had another thought.

There is a big difference between Latency an Bandwidth.
OpenDNS may be using up more of Slingshot's overseas pipe by
accessing US CDN Servers but that doesn't necessarily mean I will experience slower response.
Maybe by voting with our feet we can persuade Slingshot to adopt an OpenDNS type solution.

I am going to continue with OpenDNS for a while and see how it feels.

myfullflavour

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#1002464 10-Mar-2014 22:45

dconnell: OpenDNS may be using up more of Slingshot's overseas pipe by accessing US CDN Servers but that doesn't necessarily mean I will experience slower response.

You might not feel the latency but you should definitely notice reduced throughput.

Hammerer

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#1002518 11-Mar-2014 00:08

dconnell: OK. Thanks for the correction. Have you any other suggestions for Family safety?
The OpenDNS service seams such an elegant solution.
It is a shame Slingshot does not provide something equivalent.

I tried many products and services and found OpenDNS very useful but no good with my ISP because of the issues with local caching by ISPs.

You can get content filtering at other NZ ISPs like Watchdog and Maxnet. Although both cost money they used to provide some significant advantages over OpenDNS. For example, the free OpenDNS service didn't use to filter malware sites.

freitasm

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#1002608 11-Mar-2014 09:58

If you folks want to discuss Family Protection, DNS as a safety feature, then please open a new thread in the LAN/Routers forum as this is not specifically a Slingshot problem.

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numfarr

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#1003043 11-Mar-2014 21:58

myfullflavour:
dconnell: I have found the impact on performance to be negligible.

Over half our networks Google traffic is served from our local cache only a few ms away. If a customer uses any other DNS, they'll no longer be served via our cache and the traffic will come from Sydney.

Getting full speed (up to 100Mbps) downloads on local cache transfers is a lot more likely than traffic coming from outside the network.

This isn't correct for OpenDNS and Google servers. Youtube and www.google.co.nz still resolve to Slingshot servers when using OpenDNS, thanks to edns-client-subnet.

Interestingly Akamai seems to have worked something out too although I haven't read anything about it lately, for example Akamai-powered sites like downloadmirror.intel.com and dlcdnet.asus.com resolve to Slingshot or NZ servers using OpenDNS, e.g.

nslookup dlcdnet.asus.com
Server: resolver1.opendns.com
Address: 208.67.222.222

Non-authoritative answer:
Name: a1828.b.akamai.net
Addresses: 119.224.143.18
119.224.143.11
Aliases: dlcdnet.asus.com
dlcdnet.asus.com.edgesuite.net

tracert 119.224.143.18

Tracing route to p18.akamai.callplus.net.nz [119.224.143.18]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
...
4 32 ms 31 ms 33 ms ae-5-10.cpcak3-r1.tranzpeer.net [101.98.3.47]
5 34 ms 29 ms 27 ms ae-4-10.cpcak3-r1.tranzpeer.net [101.98.3.46]
6 * 31 ms 28 ms ad-cpcak3-r1.tranzpeer.net [101.98.3.163]
7 32 ms 30 ms 28 ms p18.akamai.callplus.net.nz [119.224.143.18]

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