Paid versions of OpenDNS? Hmm OpenDNS is but one of your alternatives to your ISP poorly performing resolvers. Is the Deluxe version of OpenDNS worth the investment of the home user (parents)?
No.
OpenDNS ought offer hosted RADIUS as part of that price especially as their primary audience has always been home users — WPA2-PSK AES is NOT sufficient anymore. Hosted RADIUS is not currently priced for home use but there is a ‘vast’ untapped market of people who do not realize their need yet; Those aware of the need are extremely unlikely either to buy a dedicated hardware appliance or build their own RADIUS server.
OpenDNS “Deluxe” as “free without ads and a smidge more” [not a quote] is not featured enough to justify $10 annually. While increased space in blacklisting is tempting, and while whitelisting-only has certain parental applications (albeit in a complex bordering on chaotic implementation challenge),
For $10 or preferably less annually OpenDNS ought apply a few changes in offerings to home users:
OpenDNS free ought offer more blacklisting space and use expanded whitelisting as an upsell. — (crippling (porn) sites a far more effective deterrent than outright blocking and requires a much larger blacklist than 50 hosts)
OpenDNS deluxe ought offer FINE GRAIN control over the NXDOMAIN intercept page. OpenDNS ought not use the NXDOMAIN intercept page in a deluxe of better panel as an upsell avenue nor should there be evidence of OpenDNS branding.
OpenDNS ought recognize the vast hoards in broken marriages and mixed families: one account six houses type scenario.
OpenDNS ought recognize some ultra broadband residential customers (fios) have multiple public IP addresses: a one house scenario.
OpenDNS deluxe ought offer wildcard support in white- and blacklisting. Wildcards as prefix and suffix (por*.rain.tld / *tube.tld), wildcards in the middle of FDQN (cdn.*tube.tld / cdn*.*.*tube.tld), and single character wildcard “?”.
OpenDNS deluxe ought offer a wiki for home gateway configuration (filters or rules) to seize resolution requests
OpenDNS free is not suffient for most residential user (parental) needs, and OpenDNS does not add enough value to justify expenditure given TreeWalk DNS, OpenDNS alternative, is readily available without invoking irrational fear by uttering ‘bind’. TreeWallk DNS (for windows) is free, easy enough to setup, and offers the home user (or parent) orders of magnitude more power and features (ConFetch).
I would have kept TreeWalk “to myself” but I hope to modify the OpenDNS deluxe feature offering while reducing the annual cost for (complex) residential users. TreeWalk currently maintained by Zenobi.
“TreeWalk is a “free personal use”, automatically installed DNS name-caching only server which is similar to, but more efficient than using your default ISP’s DNS servers. A lookup only, non-persistent caching version called BIND-LE for Windows 95/98/ME/[2000/XP/2003] is also available from our Downloads page” [[If you’re using Windows7 (aka vista) you’re SOL twofold. Enjoy the sweet suffering you masochist.]]
I do NOT advocate switching to google’s “free” DNS; all the “free” services from google are merely a methods for facilitating your (blissfully ignorant) quiet surrender of yourself via packetization. Google is not a philanthropic group; google is a giant relational database mining enterprise that also runs an ad deployment platform. Participation in google projects is PURE FOLLY.
edit: see also Pirate bay P2P DNS, dot-p2p
Sagacious Himself -- brevity in circumlocution: never blague -- suffering genius 