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Forum Discussion
Nighthawk MR60 spying on my Internet usage
I installed a new Nighthawk AX1800 WiFi 6 Mesh System only to find that it is now the top user of DNS in my network and it's looking up the hostname of every IP any of my devices visit on the interne...
For the ocasional pings to netgear, that is to determine if you have a functional WAN connection. On the web UI, the internet status box relies on that data, beyond that no special data is sent. Basically if it fails to get a ping reply from netgear then it will not list the usual statua of "GOOD" in the Internet box on th basic page.
As for DNS, the router has a built in DNS server, and it will effectively cache DNS lookups from the 2 DNS servers in the internet setup page. This is why if you use a tool like GRC's DNS benchmark https://www.grc.com/dns/benchmark.htm
You will see that especially for cached results, the router is often the fastest to respond.
Many routers do this, and the DHCP server on the router will usually automatically assign the local IP of the router as one of your DNS servers.
If you would like to change that behavior, then you can by simply not using the router's DNS server, and if you are up for a thoroughg DNS benchmark, you can optimize things to pick the fastest servers for your specific location.
Hi, Razor512. Thanks for the reply.
FYI the MR60 is in Access Point (bridge) mode so it is not providing any DNS services.