Arghhh! I hate those things! Mauritian ones are not reliable! I’ve been trying to access GeekScribes since this morning, and I kept getting a 404 Error! My international friends could easily access. The server responded when I pinged. So what was the issue? My connection was good, so it meant one thing. The DNS servers in Mauritius were fc*in with me!

That was the last time I’m suffering through those servers. I had considered the alternative for a long long time, and now I finally accepted it, and moved to it. If you are like me, and getting loads of frequent 404 errors while using the local DNS Servers, use this method. What was this alternative? OpenDNS.

What’s DNS? Domain Name Service. Basically, it turns 72.14.207.99 to “google.com”. When you type “google.com”, that address is resolved into the IP Address, which is then used to get access to Google’s servers. That resolution process is handled by the DNS servers. Now, if your DNS servers are down, if you type “google.com”, there is nothing to resolve that address into the IP address, so you get a “not found” error.

OpenDNS offers DNS servers to whomever wants to use their services. It’s free and easy to migrate to them. Also, their DNS service is much more reliable and faster than those in Mauritius. I got page displays noticeably faster than with those local DNS servers.

After I switched my DNS settings to those of OpenDNS, I could access GeekScribes again. When I reverted back to local servers? It was down again. Meaning the problem was indeed DNS related.

Try your luck with OpenDNS. And if you are not lucky or if it doesn’t work for some reason, you can still revert to your old DNS servers. Note down the IPs of the local DNS servers’ IPs before you make any changes. For Mauritius, these are for Mauritius Telecom:

Update: They seem to be more reliable now. I’m still sticking with OpenDNS…

202.123.2.6
202.123.2.11

You want to use OpenDNS too? It’s easy. Head over to OpenDNS and copy the IPs over there.

For reference, they are:

208.67.222.222
208.67.220.220

Now, you just go into your router configuration panel, and select the Manual Settings for DNS Servers. Put those IPs there. That’s it! It should work with OpenDNS now. If you have any issues, refer to the OpenDNS site for troubleshooting. Usually, it usually works without problems.

I don’t know the procedure for manually changing the DNS for users with an ADSL modem, so if anybody knows the procedure, feel free to contact us. We’ll put it here. This process should work for MyT users too. If your connection is Ethernet based, you can go into Control Panel – Network Connections – (Right-click your connection, Properties) – TCP/IP – Properties button. You can then manually set the DNS settings there. OpenDNS has more extensive instructions for all kinds of OS. Check here.

And yes. If you don’t want to use OpenDNS, you can still find public DNS servers apart from OpenDNS.