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awangatboo's avatar
awangatboo
Aspirant
Jul 06, 2024

Local Area Network DNS failing? What causes and and thing to do besides reboot?

I have an MK60 that is running as my router/firewall/DNS/DHCP and VPN.  It has done this fine for the most part for years.  Just recently (possibly tied to a firmware update but I am not sure about that) I have started having issues.  About once a day but sometimes more the DNS part of the router is just dying.  The DHCP is working, and the firewall is working. If I go somewhere based on IP that works and I know I have inbound traffic that works.  My only issue is internal DNS fails and the only way I know how to fix it is to reboot.  The only issue with rebooting it is that kills the inbound traffic.  

 

One of the tests I can do when this happens is open a cmd prompt on my system and enter nslookup.  The IP comes up with my internal Netgear and when I type www.google.com it times out in giving a response.  When still in nslookup I type "server 1.1.1.1" then type www.google.com it responds.  This is because I am sending the DNS request through the internet to Cloudflare DNS servers.  In this case, I know my Internet is working well.  

 

I am manually overriding my Internet DNS servers as I have had problems with my ISP getting DoS on their DNS servers.  My primary is 1.1.1.1 and I set my second to the primary DNS on my ISP.  

 

This has been bugging me a lot the last 4-5 days with reboots at least once a day and one day I think it was 6 times.  Each time it was the internal DNS that was failing.  

 

Does anyone have any ideas for me?  Is there a way I can ssh into the MK60 and check the running servers or get a more detailed DNS server log file?  

4 Replies

  • awangatboo's avatar
    awangatboo
    Aspirant
    Jul 07, 2024

    I had it happen again and I started looking through my logs when I saw that someone was trying to get into my openvpn from Australia.  I am in the US so this is a little fishy.  I disabled my VPN service and the last time I did this DNS started working without a reboot.  I will keep updating to see if this really resolved the issue.

  • awangatboo's avatar
    awangatboo
    Aspirant
    Jul 09, 2024

    It has been over 24 hours and my DNS has stayed up correctly so I am starting to think that the issue was the constant OpenVPN brute force that was trying to happen.  With OpenVPN off no more issues.  I think I will only update this ticket in case I see a change.  Hope my posts might be useful to someone.