The OpenDNS Global Network processes an estimated 100 billion DNS queries daily from 85 million users through 25 data centers worldwide.

[2] OpenDNS provides the following recursive nameserver addresses[3] for public use, mapped to the nearest operational server location by anycast routing.

OpenDNS also provides the following recursive nameserver addresses as part of their FamilyShield[4] parental controls that block pornography, proxy servers, and phishing sites.

[8] In many cases OpenDNS provides only negligible performance gain,[9] but may process queries more quickly than an ISP with slow DNS servers.

OpenDNS Enterprise included the ability to share management of the product across a team, along with an audit log, expanded malware protection, daily network statistic reports, and a custom block page URL.

[17] This new service featured integration with Microsoft Active Directory, which allowed admins granular control over creating policies on a per-user, per-device, and per-group basis.

Security graph is a data-driven threat intelligence engine that automatically updates malware, botnet, and phishing domain and IP blacklists enforced by Umbrella.

In July 2006 OpenDNS was launched by computer scientist and entrepreneur David Ulevitch, providing recursive DNS resolution.

[23] In June 2007 OpenDNS started advanced web filtering to optionally block "adult content" for their free accounts.

[25] Sequoia Capital and Greylock purchased the majority of shares held by Halsey Minor in July 2009 in a secondary transaction.

This behavior is similar to VeriSign's previous Site Finder or the redirects many ISP's place on their own DNS servers.

[35][36] In 2007, David Ulevitch explained that, in response to Dell installing "Browser Address Error Redirector" software on their PCs, OpenDNS started resolving requests to Google.com.

This redirection breaks some non-Web applications that rely on getting an NXDOMAIN response for non-existent domains, such as e-mail spam filtering, or VPN access where the private network's nameservers are consulted only when the public ones fail to resolve.

For other purposes, or when the DNS addresses cannot be configured in a forwarder, domains for which an NXDOMAIN response is expected should be added to the Exceptions for VPN Users section of the OpenDNS Dashboard.

Most of the issues above were resolved when OpenDNS discontinued their advertising service, and started responding with NXDOMAIN and SERVFAIL instead of redirecting non-existing domains.