One of the drawbacks of using an internet service providers own router is that some of them such as the Thomson TG585′s web interface locks away the more advanced settings. A good example of this is the ability to switch to a third party DNS service such as Google or OpenDNS. These third party DNS providers can often be much faster then your service provider’s own DNS servers, so therefore offer a much better internet browsing experience.
Luckily the Thomson TG585 does have a little bit of a ‘back door’ that you can use to set up your preferred DNS settings.
All you need to do to make use of this ‘back door’ is:
| DNS Server | Source | Label | Metric | Intf | State |
| D 212.50.160.100 | 10 | Internet | Up | ||
| D 213.249.130.100 | 10 | Internet | Up |
dns server route add dns=208.67.222.222 metric=0 intf=Internet and press enter (Replacing ‘internet’ with your Intf string)
dns server route add dns=208.67.220.220 metric=0 intf=Internet and press enter (Replacing ‘internet’ with your Intf string)
That’s all there is to it, now all you need to do is head over to OpenDNS, logon to your dashboard and tweak your settings as you see fit. Then sit back, relax and enjoy an OpenDNS powered internet experience.
The Mac operating system comes with some pretty powerful tools out of the box. One of which, I am a big fan of. The Mac ‘Automator’ is a basic almost script editor which uses workflows to automate common tasks, and with all tools like this they can be manipulated to replace full blow applications.
Internet banking is
perhaps one of the most common practices on the internet in today’s hectic
lifestyles. Behind social networking, and web based gaming of course. Which is
why it’s not surprising that a large number of internet based nasty’s such as
viruses and spy where etc are aimed at those of us who bank online.
This has obviously
been the catalyst for the birth of countless flavours of internet security
applications. Each with their own benefits and pitfalls, most of which have
huge overheads on both your PC’s CPU and Ram. Which, if you are a power user
(as no doubt most of my readers will be) this can be a true pain!
I have lost count
of the amount of times less tech savvy users have visited me, with their shiny
all singing all dancing internet protection packages which have all the bells
and whistles and then some. Predictably each time this ends in the un-happy
comments from the user as I either refuse to install it on the acer they got
for a £10 with £5 shopping at Tesco, or even the £600 Dell. Or because they
refused to back down, I installed it as per their request then they are back a
week later stating their laptops ground to a halt.
I have always wondered
why browsers offer so little protection for the end user who hasn’t tweaked and
tuned their browsers to within an inch of their lives. Don’t get me wrong, I am
all for the new versions, IE8, Safari 4 and Firefox. However I still don’t
think they go far enough!
This is where Trusteer’s Rapport steps in. This little browser based widget has
been developed to support most browsers on the market, and Trusteer have been
working closely with the worlds biggest banks in order to make this a success.
The next time you
attempt to logon to your bank’s website you may well be prompted to install
Rapport. The installation is quick and painless, even on a Mac. After a quick download process the
widget will automatically install, and immediately start protecting your web
based banking. It’s been cleverly designed and developed to detect and intercept
attempts to compromise your security using the least possible overheads. In
fact the only way you will know you are protected is by the coloured arrow in
your browsers address bar. (Which is only visible when using secure web banking
facilities)
You can find more
details about Rapport and Trusteer’s other service offerings on their website.
If you do prefer to
use installed antivirusfirewall products it’s imperative you ensure these are
kept completely up to date, this is normal done by using the applications built
in auto update wizard.
A lot of time is spent waiting for webpages to load… Or so you think! One thing you might not know is some of that time is spent waiting for results to come back from your ISP’s DNS servers most people will never bother to change their DNS server settings therefore leaving some ISP’s servers with huge volumes of traffic which could impact the speed of your internet experience.
The download is available to the public from IE8′s homepage, the download comes in at 13.3MB, but as with all IE installs, this simply downloads more files from the net prior to installation.
The download finished quite quickly, however with most installs thesedays requires a reboot before it takes effect.
Over the next few hours, I will be using IE8 as my default browser whilst I work on an offline website I am building for someone. I will post back any rantsravesreviews as and when I come across them.
For now – enjoy the future of one of the worlds most commonly used browsers!
