DSL outage hits some AT&T customers -- but not me!

DSL outage hits some AT&T customers
I read about this in the paper and on the Internet, and was surprised that I hadn't had any problems. I use AT&T DSL both at home and at work, and I live in the southeast, the area of the outage.

Today I read more about the outage and it seems the problem was with AT&T's domain name servers. A domain name server is kind of like a directory assistance service, but for IP addresses instead of phone numbers. Every website address is associated with a particular IP (Internet Protocol) address. When you type in http://mike.georgiahardins.com, your computer sends a message to a domain server asking, "What is the IP address for http://mike.georgiahardins.com?" When it gets an answer, then it uses that number (in this case, 66.249.81.121) to request the correct web site.

That explains why I didn't have an outage. I quit using AT&T's domain name servers several months ago. I switched to a free Domain Name Service called OpenDNS. AT&T still provides my Internet connectivity, but when my computer needs to know the IP address for a web site it asks the computers at OpenDNS, not AT&T. That's why I was happily surfing the net while thousands of AT&T DSL customers were cursing their computers.

OpenDNS also allows you to filter your Internet service. For example, if you turn on adult site filtering, and your kid types in http://www.samplepornsite.com, DNS will not return the correct IP address, and your computer will not load the porn site. Instead it will load a page that says pornography is not allowed on this network. Check out OpenDNS. It's free, and instructions for using it instead of your Internet Service Provider's domain name servers is provided on their website.

Sample Blocked Page

Try OpenDNS

My previous post about OpenDNS