Sunday, March 22, 2015

Changing the Technicolor tg582n router to use OpenDNS

OpenDNS - the free and ever so handy service that enables us to protect our home networks from the worst of the Internet.

http://www.opendns.com

How does Open DNS work? Essentially, it replaces the DNS lookups that the  Internet Service Provider (ISP) gives us so that when we request a Website, OpenDNS can decide if it we want it blocked or not. To do this we point our router and the lookup servers provided by OpenDNS and not to the servers provided by our ISP.

I recently changed my router provided by my Internet Service Provider (ISP) and for some reason imagined that OpenDNS was still configured. Of course it wasn't. I checked the control panel of the router and found I was using the ISP's DNS servers and found no way to change them. So the solution is to use Telnet.

First, check you are using OpenDNS.
Goto, https://www.opendns.com/welcome/
You should see a big tick if you are already configured.
If you see the tick - all is good. Ignore this blog post.

I needed the Username and password for the router,
and the OpenDNS ip addresses. These are they:
  • 208.67.222.222
  • 208.67.220.220
On a Mac you simply  open Terminal, (CMD-Space then type terminal is one way to open it.).
Not sure what Telnet client you'd use on Windows.

I am assuming the IP address of the router is 192.168.1.254, if not, use the correct one instead.
type: Telnet 192.168.1.254

JMBP:~ jr$ Telnet 192.168.1.254


Enter the Administrator's user name and password and you should see something like this:


------------------------------------------------------------------------

                             ______  Technicolor TG582n
                         ___/_____/\ 
                        /         /\\  8.4.4.J.AS
                  _____/__       /  \\ 
                _/       /\_____/___ \  Copyright (c) 1999-2011, Technicolor
               //       /  \       /\ \
       _______//_______/    \     / _\/______ 
      /      / \       \    /    / /        /\
   __/      /   \       \  /    / /        / _\__ 
  / /      /     \_______\/    / /        / /   /\
 /_/______/___________________/ /________/ /___/  \ 
 \ \      \    ___________    \ \        \ \   \  /
  \_\      \  /          /\    \ \        \ \___\/
     \      \/          /  \    \ \        \  /
      \_____/          /    \    \ \________\/
           /__________/      \    \  /
           \   _____  \      /_____\/
            \ /    /\  \    /___\/
             /____/  \  \  /
             \    \  /___\/
              \____\/

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Command prompt,
You will see the following prompt, type commands after the prompt.
{Administrator}=>

Look at the list of DNS servers you currently have. Mine are for ZEN. 
Typing, dns server route list
{Administrator}=>dns server route list

will list your current server list.
{Administrator}=>dns server route list

DNS Server Entries:
  DNS Server     Source                Label              Metric Intf         State  Domain            
D 212.23.6.100                                            10     Internet      UP      *             
D 212.23.3.100                                            10     Internet      UP      *   

Flush the list, thus:
{Administrator}=>dns server route flush

Now add the two Open DNS server addresses:
{Administrator}=>dns server route add dns=208.67.222.222 metric=10 intf=Internet
{Administrator}=>dns server route add dns=208.67.220.220 metric=10 intf=Internet

Now list them to see if they are there:
{Administrator}=>:dns server route list  

And we see:
DNS Server Entries:
  DNS Server     Source                Label              Metric Intf         State  Domain            
S 208.67.222.222                                          10     Internet      UP      *             
S 208.67.220.220                                          10     Internet      UP      *    


Now Save and exit:
{Administrator}=>saveall
{Administrator}=>exit

Worked for me. Good luck.


1 comment:

  1. I have a newer version of the above modem. After you telnet in you can type help to get a list of commands...hit dns and it takes you down one level ..ype help again and it gives commands in that region etc hit ".." to climb back up the list.
    Alternatively if when you first telnet type " menu" and a more user friendly menu structure appears.

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