Pandora Dns On The Pandora?


Trip

Sorry, but I suck at explaining stuff :P
Joined
Dec 22, 2005
Messages
2,670
Age
46
Location
The cesspit of the world, Bradford U.K
Website
ubuntufs.wordpress.com
I use OpenDNS on all the computers in my house and benefit from the speed increase greatly. Sky broadband really does suck.. big time :angry:

The Nokia tablets don't handle DNS too well currently. You can assign a new address to each different Wifi connection that you set up and save, but this means that you first have to disconnect, then edit the connection manually, then save it as a new connection and finally re-connect again to test the connection.
I haven't managed to find a way to change the address globally yet, and (as you can imagine) this is a pain to do every time.

I was wondering how the Pandora will handle the DNS settings?
 
I'd imagine it would use a standard caching name server from the root servers, but you will of course be able to edit the dns servers, should you wish to.

I don't want a third party deciding what sites I can (and can not) connect to.
 
Squidge said:
I don't want a third party deciding what sites I can (and can not) connect to.
Yes, that is annoying. But some providers have very crappy dns.

You can get rid of the opends restrictions with a local dns server with priorities (local cache, provider, opendns) and short timeouts, so it only falls back all the way to opendns when the provider's dns is slow or unresponsive.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
sindbad said:
Squidge said:
I don't want a third party deciding what sites I can (and can not) connect to.
Yes, that is annoying. But some providers have very crappy dns.

You can get rid of the opends restrictions with a local dns server with priorities (local cache, provider, opendns) and short timeouts, so it only falls back all the way to opendns when the provider's dns is slow or unresponsive.

I wasn't actually suggesting to use OpenDNS as the default.
Mainly because they currently don't have the HongKong server up yet and people around that part of the world might suffer from slow speeds, but also because I too wouldn't want to force someone to use a DNS server that can filter sites.
Just hoping that I can configure it if I like, that's all :)

Interesting Sinbad, I wasn't aware you could do it like that. Might have to see if that could be implemented on the N800 too. Thanks :)
 
Last edited by a moderator:
I suppose that, by default, it would get the DNS server from DHCP just like every other network-enabled device on the planet that uses DHCP.
 
atomicthumbs said:
I suppose that, by default, it would get the DNS server from DHCP just like every other network-enabled device on the planet that uses DHCP.
Yeah but the N800 doesn't let you disable that and use the same DNS address for all connections regardless of what ISP your going through. I just wanted to make sure that the Pandora would let us, that's all :)
 
Last edited by a moderator:
I use OpenDNS on all my computers as well. I was under the impression that half the point of the service was that it didn't filter anything. I've certainly never had a problem with it not connecting to any site I've tried to visit.

What are the "restrictions" that OpenDNS supposedly imposes? If it's only filtering known malware-infested sites, then I'd consider that a plus, not a minus.
 
It has a very paranoid idea about what is malware, and I couldn't care any less about their protection as I don't use windows (and neither does the pandora). It also bans porn sites.

The problem is that it also bans a bunch of completely random domains (they used to ban djangoproject.com) and when it can't find a domain, you get their search engine with ads (not really annoying, since adblock does block them).
 
Chip said:
If it's only filtering known malware-infested sites, then I'd consider that a plus, not a minus.
That's all it filters as far as I know and is one of the reasons I tell everyone that I know to use it (especially new Windows users). Some people just get a little paranoid when they hear anything about filtering I think?
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Yeah, I hope there is an option to set a static DNS and not just get settings from the DHCP, as I tend to prefer using Level3's DNS servers (4.2.2.1 to 4.2.2.5 IIRC) to ones provided by whatever ISP I'm on. Additionally, it would be cool if we could use local caching using pdnsd or something similar, but I'm not holding my breath on that being an official feature, and it might also be unhealthy for the SD card, depending on how it was configured.
 
sindbad said:
It has a very paranoid idea about what is malware, and I couldn't care any less about their protection as I don't use windows (and neither does the pandora). It also bans porn sites.

The problem is that it also bans a bunch of completely random domains (they used to ban djangoproject.com) and when it can't find a domain, you get their search engine with ads (not really annoying, since adblock does block them).
It's never blocked me once and I've checked out porn.. every now and again :D
You can White list by domains now through the website.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
I use wicd to manage my network connections on xubuntu, and it allows your to specify up to 3 global DNS servers to use for all connections. So if a a GUI python script can do it there's no reason it couldn't be managed easily on the backend. The OpenDNS site says to do this under Network-Manager (the default in ubuntu):

$ sudo gedit /etc/dhcp3/dhclient.conf
# append the following line to the document
prepend domain-name-servers 208.67.222.222,208.67.220.220;

Since the Pandora is debianlike I'm sure a similar hack will work.
 
It can't be all that paranoid about sketchy websites, as the only times I've been sent to the search/ad page is when I mis-type a url. To be fair though, I'm personally pretty careful about where I tread on the internet (as a windows user, I have to be), so that could have a lot to do with it. I also don't generally go to porn sites. Perhaps OpenDNS is only a limitation for more daring web users.

On topic: I would prefer to be able to set a default DNS server for all connections if possible. Ideally this should be easy to turn off too, as many public access points have a TOS welcome page that you must accept in order to use. Those pages only come up if you use the assigned DNS server. I would hope this could be done on-the-fly, without having to disconnect and edit a config file.
 
sindbad said:
It has a very paranoid idea about what is malware, and I couldn't care any less about their protection as I don't use windows (and neither does the pandora). It also bans porn sites.

The problem is that it also bans a bunch of completely random domains (they used to ban djangoproject.com) and when it can't find a domain, you get their search engine with ads (not really annoying, since adblock does block them).
Create an account. It only blocks those things by default because it's what many OpenDNS users want.

Go to your control panel. Add a network corresponding to the IP address which you are using OpenDNS from. Remove all filtering and whatnot from this network. You can turn off malware stuff too.

And I prefer something telling me that I might have misspelled a domain to getting a "could not find server" error. When the nameservers for my school went down, it told me which were down and I emailed the district admin and they fixed it. :)
 
Last edited by a moderator:
javaJake said:
As long as Pandora looks to /etc/resolv.conf for all its DNS information I'm good to go. ;)
It's Linux, of course it will.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Has anybody looked into https://pi-hole.net/ for a DNS /dev/null for advertisements on the Pandora? Havent installed it yet, so atm do not know if it is possible on a Pandora.


edit: oops... sorry for necroposting...
 
Last edited:
Back
Top