If you are the IT manager for a small or medium sized business, school or non-profit (or even just a parent trying to keep your children from coming across inappropriate content), chances are you’ve toiled with cost effective ways to make your network more secure while increasing your users’s browsing speed and reliability.

You’ve also more than likely searched for a way to do all this while blocking access to various categories of websites (i.e. pornography, video streaming, etc) without having to constantly monitor, update and tweak.

If you’re technically savvy there are servers and applications you can setup in-house, but they require upkeep and updating, not to mention hardware and other resources.

This is where the beauty of OpenDNS comes in.  This free service is proclaimed as the world’s largest and fastest growing DNS service. 

Best of all it’s free, takes very little configuration to set up, and you can instantly start taking control of your network.

Why Block Access to Certain Sites?

Why would you want to block user’s access to certain types of sites?  A great question indeed!  If you are responsible for a business network (or a parent looking to keep their children safer) it only makes sense to block access to things that are deemed inappropriate. 

In a work setting, this is typically adult content sites, streaming video sites, chat or social networking sites, etc.  While these types of sites certainly have their place in the world at large, in a work environment they can open the business up to liability, decrease network performance and at the very least waste a lot of time.

OpenDNS is very easy to setup, and once you’ve created a free account you simply define your network or networks, point your upstream DNS to use them instead of your ISP and you’re instantly able to control what is accessible. 

You can block by category, by specific site, and even create custom messages that appear on a user’s screen when they attempt to access a site that is not allowed.

Easy to Configure and Manage

OpenDNS has a lot of great features, and we recommend you check them out for yourself.

One that I particularly like is the ability to set up shortcuts (like the old days of putting names in host files). 

With a shortcut, you can set up short pointers that direct you to your favorite website.  Then you only have to enter the shortcut into your browser’s address bar and your taken to the site.

The list of features goes on, and for a free services there is lots to be happy about.  Check out OpenDNS for yourself and see if it’s right for you home, small office or business.