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Forum Discussion
AX3000 Manual DNS setting not taking effect
Good morning everyone. I am using a AX3000 as my main internal router with a AX2400 as a repeater for my downstairs basement. This setup has worked perfectly fine but something I found out the other day is that I cannot get the manual DNS option to work under the internet settings.
The reason I need this setting to work is I am doing testing on my network and some of it is local android testing which I need to do inside of my network. Upon logging into my basement's wifi signal I do get the correct ip address but my specified DNS server never gets sent down to the phone or any other device. I know I can force this manually but most of the phones we are trying to use are not unlocked/rooted so we can't force the dns on the phone (at least to my knowledge). The setting is defiantly saved in the AX3000's Primary DNS setting but all it does is show the routers ip address on the devices instead.
I have tried forgetting the network, restarting phone, re-add the network and even tried using a brand new device on the network all of them get the routers ip address for the DNS server. The reason I am reaching out is to see if anyone has any recommendations to help us get to the point where we can properly get that going?
Thank you in advance
13 Replies
Alas, you are caught in "the way things work". All residential WiFi routers operate by using DHCP to inform devices that the router itself is the appropriate DNS server. The DNS setting feature informs the router which DNS authority it should use to resolve URLs.
A common work-around is to install a separate DHCP server. The trick there is to find a DHCP server that can be set to do what you want. (i.e. offer specific DNS servers rather than itself. I just checked one common DHCP server, Pi-hole, and it operates the same way as the Orbi router.)
Yeah I was trying Pi-hole on my server but I couldn't ever get the router itself to push dns traffic to it but now I think it was because I was running it as a container on a windows server so it doesn't bind with the real nic and maybe that could potentially cause the hiccup. Going to try a rasp-pi device and setup a dhcp server on that as well as a dns server. You think that would be ideal?
This specific situation is a bit unusual. Most of the time, people install separate DHCP servers to provide features that the Orbi does not, such as:
- Enable DNS resolution of "local" URLs, such as "printer" or "movie server". (Pi-hole has this feature)
- Perform filtering on internet traffic. (Pi-hole also does this.)
For this application, the trick will be to find a DHCP server that allows you to define the contents of the DNS fields. The key appears to be setting DHCP option 6. I found instructions to do this with Windows Server (DHCP Manager in Administrative Tools). Found a link to a Linux DHCP, but could not find anything about option 6 in the configuration file.
Good Luck!
Thank you! I won't have an update until after the 11th of this month due to shipping delays but I'll post back if I can and I have high hopes this will work.
I've used pi-hole both as a stand alone on a ras-pi and hosted on a docker container. It should work.
I didn't use it has dhcp but it did work fine for DNS blocking.
I just recently purchased a mini-pc to use as a opnsense router that I run unbound for DNS ad block and recursive DNS. Pretty fun
That's cool bro
Sorry, wasn't meaning to make it sound a hole ish. But just stating it should work. I've used pihole with netgear for at least 5-8 years and haven't found a router it didn't work on. And I tested a ton of them.
Maybe a few screensnips of what you're actual settings for DNS are?
Lest we stray too far from the original problem. The goal is to configure a DHCP server that will pass specified DNS server IPs in the DHCP assignment packet (option 6), rather than pass the IP of the DHCP server itself. The DHCP settings on my Pi-hole server do not show fields to set the DNS server values:
The original problem was my netgear routers was not honoring a manual dns entry when they was the dhcp server. It would only ever return the router as the dhcp server and dns server. Even when I manually setup a DNS server in the routers settings it would only ever pass down the ip of the router itself instead of what I set. This caused everything to continue to run the old way which is not what I needed for my platform. I just hooked up and programmed my rasp pi device with pi hole as the dns and dhcp server and everything is working just great. I disabled all the stuff in the router as it just didn't work if it was the dhcp server.
How did you verify that the Pi-hole DHCP is supplying these DNS servers through Option 6 of the DHCP Offer?
(I would do this by
- Connecting a Windows PC/laptop and then looking at the values shown by ipconfig /all
- or, using Wireshark to capture the actual DHCP conversation between computer and network. Display the DHCP packet and look at Option 6.
)
First off I was using ipconfig /all but then I checked a few things out. Long story short I ended up keeping my network seperate because my isp router which was a sagemcom wouldn't honor a dns server. I ended up with a split network and run my testing network by itself with the rasp pi device on it and that works with my netgear routers. Tons of troubleshooting and testing from android/IOS and Windows and this ended up being the best solution.
Great that ipconfig /all confirmed that Pi-hole supplies custom DNS server addresses in the DHCP response. It was not clear (to me) from the Pi-hole settings information that this is what it does.
