Best public DNS – finding the best for you
DNS is so important that Google decided to get into the business. Normally DNS isn't anything we think about. And you probably shouldn't, unless your job happens to be maintaining one, like mine once...
View ArticleFixing my b0rken WordPress installation
A little over a week ago, WordPress started acting weird. First, it just got dog slow. Then my site stats page started freezing until I scrolled down and then back up again. Then I started seeing a...
View ArticleDNS and iTunes and other streaming media
There are reports floating about regarding third-party DNS affecting downloads of movies and other media, particularly from iTunes. So, if tweaking DNS settings used to be what all the cool kids are...
View ArticleTwo reasons you should use something other than your local ISP’s DNS
There’s some bad behavior going on with DNS right now. In Washington and at local ISPs. It turns out that some slimeball ISPs are using DNS as a revenue stream, by sending weird DNS requests to...
View ArticleToggle between two registry settings with another simple script
On the heels of yesterday, the same technique that swapped hosts files can be adapted to toggle registry settings too. The registry, if you’re not familiar, is a central database that stores Windows...
View ArticleThe Internet is at war. Please read this if you run a DNS server.
A Dutch ISP that acts as a spam haven is DDOSing Spamhaus, and they’re using DNS to do it. The attack is using spoofed DNS queries to create, basically, a smurf-like attack. And the sheer volume of...
View ArticleOutsource your DNS to make your Internet connection more reliable
Early this week, Charter had a major outage affecting most of its customer base. Those who use third-party, non-Charter DNS servers were unaffected. This is a case where making a performance-related...
View ArticleHow hard-coding your DNS can improve your security
I’ve long recommended hard-coding your DNS settings as a performance and reliability enhancement–here’s my guide for that–but it turns out it can be a security enhancement too. Botnets targetting...
View ArticleClean malware from a router
I see a few misleading articles out there promising to tell you how to scan your router for malware or viruses. Unfortunately they don’t really explain the problem. They also don’t explain the...
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