Benefit of home dns server?

F

flapster

n00b
Joined
Jul 5, 2007
Messages
30
What is the benefit of having a dns server set up for/in a home network?
I mean, i know when i go out to the internet it uses my ISP's (Cox in this case) dns servers to resolve websites. So for a dns server in a home network it would only resolve what is behind your firewall?

It appears my router with DDWRT already has DNSMasq running. Is it necessary that I keep this running? If i turn it off will i no longer be able to access my other computers using \\computername ?

Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks
 
I use my home DNS server for the following purposes:

1.) I hate typing in www.google.com (or wahtever frequently visited address) so I create an entry like "go" which directs it to google. Makes browsing faster.

2.) Many names for a single computer.

3.) It allows more control over access to the internet. For instance, let's say there are some websites I don't want anyone visiting while using a computer in my home. I make an entry that points to a server somewhere that isn't what they're looking for. That probably isn't the best example, but it's a useful tool sometimes.

4.) You can open a port in your firewall to allow DNS requests from your internal DNS server. This is only really useful in a few very limited ways, but when you need it, there's no substitute.

As for your second question, the DNS server in your home network, if configured to be such, will act as your first resolver. If you enter in a name of a machine that is inside your network, it will point the machine correctly. If it doesn't find an entry, it will forward to the name resolution request to whatever servers it can (usually your ISP's dns servers).

I can't think of a reason why you'd want to disable the routers DNS functionality. If you do, it would probably cause some issues when resolving internal hostnames. As a note, there is a file called hosts located at C:\windows\system32\drivers\etc (in windows xp) that you can edit to add in your own persistent DNS entries. The format is simple enough, and it can be a fun thing to play with.
 
Sieravor said:
As for your second question, the DNS server in your home network, if configured to be such, will act as your first resolver. If you enter in a name of a machine that is inside your network, it will point the machine correctly. If it doesn't find an entry, it will forward to the name resolution request to whatever servers it can (usually your ISP's dns servers).
Click to expand...
I've heard this makes things much faster. Do you see that?
 
It will speed up DNS queries considerably if it cache's the results from previous requests, although it could be argued that it won't make much of a difference because windows does the same thing by default (although the windows cache of DNS entries goes away after a reboot).

Anyway, the short answer is: Yes, having an internal DNS server, if configured correctly, will speed up name resolution.

As for my experience with them the increase is considerable.
 
For most home purposes editing the HOSTS file should be enough, Sometimes your DNS of choice might be off line so you can have your own list of your most frequented sites. Other use is just short cuts, I set "w" to point to the router, "p" to modem and "c" to a school site so I only need to type "ping c" to do tests. And of course many use it to to block you know what.
If you have less then 5 comp's in the house using HOSTS is a lot easier then tweaking a DNS server.
 
Thanks for the replies. I think i'll leave it as is for now, possibly set something up later to play with.

Actually another question, is the hosts file looked at before the primary dns server?
For example I put the following in my hosts file
66.94.234.13 google.com

66.94.234.13 is yahoo.com (according to ping results). But after saving the hosts file and going to google.com in my browser, it still brings me to the google homepage. I would never do this, but I'm curious as to why it didnt work.

edit: Nevermind, I got it to work on my home PC. I'm guessing its something with the proxy server we use at work that is causing it to not work here.
 
Well, you don't have to put the .com for the fqdn. really, anything you'd like can go there, for instance "<google's IP address> goog" would go to google.com when you entered goog as a url.

And yes, the hosts file is checked before any DNS requests are made, so what you have in your hosts file will be used first.

Also, in order to make sure that the hosts file info is actually used, you should flush your DNS cache by using the following CLI command: ipconfig /flushdns

That will empty window's temporary DNS cache and will force all new requests to be processed in the normal fashion, ala hosts>primary dns>secondary dns> no such host. :) Enjoy.
 
Sieravor said:
I use my home DNS server for the following purposes:

1.) I hate typing in www.google.com (or wahtever frequently visited address) so I create an entry like "go" which directs it to google. Makes browsing faster.
Click to expand...

And you modified DNS for this? Ugh. This is what a browser is for; Firefox does it (and takes arguments, so with 5-seconds of setup you can type 'egg x1950' and it'll jump to Newegg and do a search for a x1950)
 
It was just an example, and the changes I made to the DNS server were provided to hundreds of people. There's no way I'm going to go and install firefox on everyone's computer in the building, then setup the forwards, then teach them how to use a proper browser. :)

Also, our off-site clients like to have access to various shortcut commands that normally wouldn't work, even if their browsers were configured for it (for instance, internal FQDN resolution over a VPN).
 
Sieravor said:
I use my home DNS server for the following purposes:

4.) You can open a port in your firewall to allow DNS requests from your internal DNS server. This is only really useful in a few very limited ways, but when you need it, there's no substitute.
Click to expand...

I'd add reason 5.

5. Its a good way to learn more about DNS if you ever want to work with it in a production environment in the future.

Even though its no big deal to me now, the first time I was over at a friends (and it worked) it was a kick to type mydomain.com and have my own page load of off a web server in my house.

Almost as much fun as back when 95 was in beta, and another guy and myself who were doing Windows 95 support contract directly to Microsoft first printed from one of our computers to the other over what was then the blazing speed of a 28.8 kbps dial-up Internet connection. We were tickled to get that first dot matrix print job to work. Took almost 4 minutes with just the "Generic/text only" print driver to get two lines of text, but it worked.
 
Sieravor said:
1.) I hate typing in www.google.com (or wahtever frequently visited address) so I create an entry like "go" which directs it to google. Makes browsing faster.
Click to expand...
OpenDNS allows you to do this as well ;)

You may want to check into OpenDNS- it adds some nifty features to your network. I've even used it at a corporate level. Telling employees just to type in "website" in the address bar is much simpler than the full URL for them.

Otherwise- my opinion on home DNS is (unless you have an extra box), it costs more than you would ever benefit from.
Also sucks up more electricity, time setting it up, keeping it going, etc.
 
So basically I could setup a DNS server on my internal network, and all my machines (including the dns server itself) would point to that as its primary DNS?

Then if I make a request to say, resolve asus.com and my internal DNS doesnt know, it will go to the ISP's DNS server to resolve it? Is that what the DNS forwarder is for on my internal DNS server?

Sorry about all the questions, I'm just looking for an overview of how it will all work.
 
You have the basic idea, yes.
I personally just don't think it will speed it up much enough for you to notice or go through the trouble of running one.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top