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

[awangatboo]

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?  

[awangatboo]

Not sure why the text is so broekn up in my first post.

[awangatboo]

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]

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.

[FURRYe38]

Glad you got it working. Please mark your thread as solved so others will know. Be sure to save off a back up configuration to file for safe keeping. Saves time if a reset is needed.
https://kb.netgear.com/24231/How-do-I-back-up-the-router-configuration-settings-on-my-Nighthawk-rout...
Enjoy. 📡