DNS Settings on OS vs. DNS Setting on router?

[Ryan Rose]

What is the point of setting the DNS on the router if you can just do it on the OS? Is it like you set the DNS on the router and then if your OS is set to automatically get the DNS it will just choose the one set on the router? This has had me confused for some time now. Any feedback is appreciated.

 

[DeauteratedDog]

I have found one downside to setting it on the individual machine - but it only applies to laptops or other mobile devices - if you join a network that blocks DNS traffic to servers outside its organization, you will not have DNS services. This has happened to me a a couple of times with my laptop.

Other than that, not much difference.

 

[Ryan Rose]

I have found one downside to setting it on the individual machine - but it only applies to laptops or other mobile devices - if you join a network that blocks DNS traffic to servers outside its organization, you will not have DNS services. This has happened to me a a couple of times with my laptop.

Other than that, not much difference.

so do you suggest i just set the devices preferred dns the same as the routers preferred dns?

 

[DeauteratedDog]

I would set the individual device to obtain its DNS information from the DHCP server, and set your preferred DNS server(s) on the DHCP server (router).

 

[Ryan Rose]

I would set the individual device to obtain its DNS information from the DHCP server, and set your preferred DNS server(s) on the DHCP server (router).

So say my default gateway address is 192.168.0.1
And the DNS I want to use is google dns

I would set router DNS settings to Google DNS, and then set my individual device to 192.168.0.1?

 

[bill001g]

This is purely a convenience. Many people are not skilled enough to set the DNS on multiple devices with multiple OS. It can also be unmanagable if you have a large number of machines.

In most cases it does not matter which DNS you use you get the same results no matter. There are exceptions where dns is used to direct the same names to different servers. Netflix uses this to try to limit who can access movies in certain countries.

If you know what you are doing you are better off setting the dns in the OS where you can have more control over it but it likely does not matter to the vast majority of people

 

[DeauteratedDog]

It really depends on how much configuration your DHCP server allows - it might let you set the DNS addresses to give out - in which case the router will hand out the Google DNS directly to the client. It might not let you configure the DNS servers at all, in which case you are stuck with configuring it on the client device. Or, it might do something in-between, like letting you set a DNS server on it (the router/DHCP server), but it handing out its own address as the DNS address.
You will just have to play with it and see what you can do.

 

[Ryan Rose]

This is purely a convenience. Many people are not skilled enough to set the DNS on multiple devices with multiple OS. It can also be unmanagable if you have a large number of machines.

In most cases it does not matter which DNS you use you get the same results no matter. There are exceptions where dns is used to direct the same names to different servers. Netflix uses this to try to limit who can access movies in certain countries.

If you know what you are doing you are better off setting the dns in the OS where you can have more control over it but it likely does not matter to the vast majority of people

well the reason i made this thread is because i ran a net analysis as im having problems with my wifi devices and it came back with "Your ISP's DNS server is slow to lookup names" so what I take from it is that I need to change my DNS and I assume it's the router's DNS that I need to change. So I ran a namebench and found the best DNS for my location is OpenDNS. So I'm setting OpenDNS on my router, but I don't know what DNS to set for my pc's static ip settings.