THOUGHTS : Virgin Media DNS servers

So I have a grudge against the Virgin Media DNS servers, in the fact they are some of the slowest I have ever experienced.

While I respect the fact that I could buy a separate router and configure the DNS servers on that, and run the superhub in modem mode to enhance my experience, I cannot afford to do that at the moment. Wouldn't it be better for Virgin Media, as they have partnered with Google to power their email platform to preconfigure the Superhub with the Google Public DNS servers, which happen to be some of the fastest around?!

Or am I talking nonsense?

Unfortunately the nanny state will not allow that. On behalf of the state VM are expected to nanny your web browsing and protect you from 'harmful' sites. They couldn't do this if they used Google's DNS.

I'm pretty sure they could create a whitelist and blacklist. Or use OpenDNS servers which are again quite fast and reliable.

In reply to a post by Daemon66:

Unfortunately the nanny state will not allow that. On behalf of the state VM are expected to nanny your web browsing and protect you from 'harmful' sites. They couldn't do this if they used Google's DNS.

They can do it fine regardless of the DNS being used in the same manner they implement the IWF watch list.

Configure your local clients to use 8.8.8.8 instead of getting DNS from DHCP. I find their DNS to be acceptable. 194.168.4.100 is only 4 hops away for me and latency always around 10ms.

While I fully respect changing the DNS on all devices, it's not possible on Android devices, without really digging deep. I'd prefer to have it done at point of connection, instead of device level. Hey ho, will just have to save up and grab the Nighthawk 7000.

The IWF and other legislative blocking is different because it applies to all connections and hence is done at a lower level. This is not the same as the nanny blocking that you can actually opt-out of on an individual basis. VM need you to use their DNS by default so that they can offer this type of per-customer blocking. They can't redirect to someone else's DNS because they wouldn't then have per-customer control of the settings.

It would be interesting to see them offer OpenDNS as an option but I'm not sure whether it would satisfy their legal requirements - it might do.

Ah I misunderstood 'harmful' sites as referring to sites blocked by court order rather than the babysitting service.

My bad!

I'd like the option to choose from alternative DNS servers that Virgin Media would work in partnership with, as I have opted out of the babysitting stuff. The court orders are still in affect no matter what DNS servers are used.