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netroworx2's avatar
netroworx2
Aspirant
Sep 11, 2022

Orbi VPN with custom dhcp/dns

I have an Orbi Wifi 6 mesh.

 

All working well.

 

I have another server on my network acting as DHCP via dnsmasq served from 192.168.1.68.

It gives out domain names reliably based on MAC addresses.

I can ping machine1.local and get a response.

Let's say machine1 is assigned IP: 192.168.1.100

I've set the router to act as an OpenVPN server.

 

I can connect to the VPN from outside my normal network.

The client gets assigned VPN IP: 

192.168.254.21

with gateway and DNS of 192.168.254.1

External DNS resolution to domains such as yahoo.com works ok.

I can traceroute and ping to 192.168.1.68.

I can ssh to: 192.168.1.68 and run nslookup and resolve machine1.local

 

If from the VPN client machine I run:

nslookup

> server 192.168.1.68

> machine1

 

I get:

;; connection timed out; no servers could be reached

 

Something is blocking the DNS traffic for some reason.

 

Appreciate any advice.

 

 

Troubleshooting

8 Replies

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  • CrimpOn's avatar
    CrimpOn
    Guru
    Sep 11, 2022

    What DNS servers are defined in the router?

    • Whatever provided by ISP?
    • User defined external DNS, such as 1.1.1.1 or 8.8.8.8?
    • 192.168.1.68?
      • CrimpOn's avatar
        CrimpOn
        Guru
        Sep 12, 2022

        Thanks.  My hypothesis is that the Orbi is intercepting DNS queries and referring them to the ISP DNS servers, which have no idea who 192.168.1.68 is. Using DHCP to tell all devices on the network to use 192.168.1.68 to resolve DNS queries does not tell the Orbi router to do so. (because the Orbi does not get its IP from 192.168.1.68.  It has claimed that IP for itself.)

         

        One experiment might be to set the Orbi to resolve DNS at 192.168.1.68 and have that server resolve DNS at some public source, such as 1.1.1.1 or 8.8.8.8

         

        Question: was the ".local" left off that nslookup query on purpose?