If you spend any time on the Internet sending e-mail or browsing the Web, then you use domain name servers without even realizing it. Domain name servers, or DNS, are an incredibly important but completely hidden part of the Internet. The DNS system forms one of the largest databases on the planet and without DNS, the Internet would shut down very quickly.
 
When you use the Web or send an e-mail message, you use a domain name to do it. For example, the URL “http://www.howstuffworks.com” contains the domain name howstuffworks.com. So does the e-mail address “admin@ howstuffworks.com.”

Human-readable names like “howstuffworks.com.” are easy for people to remember, but are of no use to computers. All of the computers on the Internet use names called IP addresses to refer to one another. For example, the computer that humans refer to as “www.howstuffworks.com” has the IP address 70.42.251.42. Every time you use a domain name, you use the Internet’s domain name servers (DNS) to translate the human-readable domain name into the machine-readable IP address. During a day of browsing and e-mailing, you might access the domain name servers hundreds of times!

The Internet Service Provider (ISP) that you use at home (Virgin Media, BT, Sky etc) to connect to the Internet have their own DNS servers to translate your web address into an IP address. There is no filtering, so any web address entered on your home computer is translated and the page is displayed on your screen.

Open DNS is an organisation that provides free protection for home users.

How does it work?

Open DNS have built their own DNS servers linked to a massive database of known inappropriate websites. All you have to do is use their DNS servers instead of the ones provided by your Internet Service Provider.

 

 

This involves making a small change to your router at home by adding the two addresses of the Open DNS servers.

Full instructions on how to set up an account can be found at:-