San Francisco (PRWEB) February 6, 2008

OpenDNS, the award-winning DNS service that makes the Internet safer, faster, smarter and more reliable, today announced Catoosa County Schools has switched to OpenDNS from the DNS service it previously got from its ISP, AT&T. Catoosa County Schools is a ten thousand student school district with sixteen total schools and one district office located in Georgia. On the leading edge of education technology, the district prioritizes kids’ access to a safe Internet as a learning tool and provides open access to its comprehensive technology plan on its Web site. Now providing DNS service to more than 3 million Internet users worldwide, OpenDNS is the world’s largest, fastest-growing DNS service.

Catoosa County Schools is using OpenDNS as its sole source for external DNS lookups and all DNS traffic from its network is being directed to the OpenDNS system. The District is using OpenDNS adult site blocking to help protect its students from accessing inappropriate websites and has enabled phishing site blocking to help protect all of its users, students and staff alike, from potentially devastating phishing scams. OpenDNS requires nothing to download or install and is entirely free for Catoosa County Schools to use, therefore freeing budget for additional technology initiatives.

“We chose OpenDNS after a DNS outage with our previous provider, AT&T (formerly Bellsouth),” said Jarrod Holder, Network Administrator for Catoosa County Schools. “With OpenDNS’s network of datacenters around the world and the price of the service (free) it was clearly the logical choice.”

Holder describes his experience with OpenDNS as “excellent” and encourages other network administrators to make the switch.

“DNS queries are faster now than with our previous DNS solution from AT&T,” he continued. “By looking at our stats through OpenDNS, we are able to see what sites our users frequent and, if necessary, block access to sites deemed inappropriate. OpenDNS has proved to be an extremely useful tool in managing our network.”

About Catoosa County Schools

Catoosa County Schools is a ten thousand student, award-winning district in the state of Georgia. With the mission that Catoosa students are “learning today…succeeding tomorrow,” system personnel recognize that students face a future where technology will affect every facet of their lives. Through the use of technology in instruction, the schools can offer unique and powerful opportunities for everyone to succeed.

About OpenDNS

OpenDNS makes the Internet safer, faster, smarter and more reliable. Based in San Francisco, the company operates a large distributed network that powers a new kind of recursive DNS (Domain Name System) service that provides all Internet users increased security, reliability and performance. OpenDNS is thoroughly committed to building and operating the best DNS platform in the world and to improving the Internet. For more information about OpenDNS, please visit: http://www.opendns.com

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