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DNS through a gateway router

     - Wednesday, August 04, 2004

Bizarrely enough, using static IP address on my internal has always been something of a mystery to me. The problem I've had isn't really any difficulty about setting up the actual IP address. That's pretty straight forward. Picking the IP (such as 192.168.1.5), and enter the corresponding subnet mask (255.255.255.0) isn't so hard. Neither really is selecting the default gateway, which is just the address of your router.

For me, the funny part was always selecting the DNS server addresses. I had thought, incorrectly, that the addresses needed to be the DNS servers from your ISP. Which left me wondering what would happen if my ISP changed their DNS IP's. Not sure how often that might happen, or if it ever happened. But it still didn't seem to make sense to have a router which received a dynamic IP address from my ISP, but then hardcode the DNS info into my computers. Not to mention an updating nightmare down the road if my ISP's DNS addresses actually did change.

But, ah ha, not true. As long as you have your router's DHCP server enabled, you can enter the router's address as the DNS. Your router will then forward the DNS request on to your ISP's DNS server on the WAN side for translation.

posted by Kevin Watts |  Permalink |