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Massive DNS leak

fo0barbaz
Tutor

Massive DNS leak

Nighthawk AX5200/RAX48 wifi 6 router
Windows 10 OS

 

I have the nighthwalk up and running for a few days now.  I also use a commercial vpn service.  Just out of curiosity I checked the DNS leak while on vpn today.  To my surprise, I found massive DNS leak.  My DNS request hits like 10 different ISP servers, two Cloudflare servers and one VPN provider's server.  I should see just my vpn providers DNS server in the DNS leak test.  I reinstalled the vpn client, went through all the settings and even disabled the multiphomed name resolution in local group policy but no avail.  

I removed the nighthawk and put the 5-year-old Linksys router back.  No more dns leaks.  I see only one DNS server in the leak test and that's my VPN provider's DNS server - no isp, no cloudflare, etc.

 

I set the WAN DNS on nighthawk as 1.1.1.1 and 1.0.0.1 which are cloudflare servers.  It doesn't make any difference wethere the OS is windows, linux or mac.  Chrome, Firefox and Edge (all with no extension) leak DNS when using nighhawk as the router.

 

Can someone please shed some light on this issue?  Am I missing a setting?  This DNS leak issue would be a huge let down and the nighthawk would of no use for me at all.  Thanks      

Message 1 of 4
plemans
Guru

Re: Massive DNS leak

Are you using IPv6? 

Did you setup the IPv6 dns server if you're using that? 

Message 2 of 4
fo0barbaz
Tutor

Re: Massive DNS leak

No I completely disabled IPv6 in nighthawk and windows OS (though I have my doubts).  Did more investigation and was able to fix the dns leak.

 

The DHCP service for the LAN on my old router sets the DNS for clients from the WAN interface which is 1.1.1.1 and 1.0.0.0.1.  So the clients get the ip from 192.168.1.x block and the DNS as 1.1.1.1 and 1.0.0.1.  Nighthawk, on the other hand, uses its LAN interface IP as DNS server. 

 

IP: 192.168.1.10

DNS Servers: 192.168.1.100, 192.168.1.100
DHCP server: 192.168.1.100

Default Gateway: 192.168.1.100

 

I manually set the NIC's DNS to 1.1.1.1 and 1.0.0.1 on windows 10 and no more DNS leak when using vpn and nighthawk router.   I hope netgear give us the option to set DNS servers for the DHCP clients.

Message 3 of 4
FURRYe38
Guru

Re: Massive DNS leak

What happens if you use auto detected ISP DNS? 

Message 4 of 4
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