It would appear that a certain Irish ISP (no names, no pack drill) has taken to blocking content they deem as unsuitable. This follows on from another Irish ISP that has adopted the “three strikes and out” rule on file sharing.
They aren’t just blocking the unsuitable content but entire sites.
The worrying thing is the lack of choice offered and no prior warnings – just blocked unceremoniously. Additionally there is no burden of proof required – so malicious reports could easily see someone barred from the internet. When you consider that most schools in the UK expect children to have access to the web at home for school purposes – then we once again enter into the realm of a two tier society. The have and have nots.
But, I don’t want to get into the politics of these decisions here, but show how (in the case of the site blocking) it can be overcome with some simple changes. Equally, making these changes could improve your surf speeds even if you don’t get blocked.
The approach is to utilise a third party DNS service such as OpenDNS or Google.
If you’re not a fan of either or find they aren’t perhaps as good as your current ISP then try using namebench – which is a simple utility that has code for Windows, Macs and *nix. In their own words they state that namebench “hunts down the fastest DNS servers available for your computer to use“.
So why is this a 201?
Mostly because it’s a step above an intro lesson to DNS (covered here) as you’ll need to know how to access yoru router and change it’s settings – that I won’t cover here, but OpenDNS cover a ‘how to‘ for most major manufacturers.
And another way around this is to utilise one of the methods discussed here recently.
- Should ISP’s play judge & jury?
- What about other un-regulated setups such as the IWF?
- Ignoring for now, the dangers to minors are you for or against ineternet censorship by organisations?
Good info Stuart that many people don't really know about.
As for me, all my machines are set to use openDNS. I like it for the increase in speed and the ability to set network level filtering which makes for a safer Internet environment…especially with kids in the house.
So true – I love OpenDNS for its addons such as the filtering but I, and others I've read about, have had some weird experiences with OpenDNS and I'm nothing if not a pro-choice person.
So why give one when several is better?
True.
Interesting that you've had problems. I wonder if location has something to do with it because OpenDNS has been very reliable for us.
Not sure it's down to location as they have a UK / European setup as well – but I firmly believe (inline with stuff I've read) that it is likely down to the way they cache.