DNS - ? a bit confussed

[ngrayson]

Hi Guys,

My problem may have been that the setup has always been broken but since I installed 6.6.1 I'm having an odd problem.

Config is windows XP pro, wingate (now 6.6.1, was 6.2.2). Significantly, no DNS defined on in the TCP properties of the windows dialer instance. Have DNS addresses in the IP resolver list and this seems to have worked for the last N years (where N is positive and large).

When the wingate machine boots first thing, the internet connection is down. Previously any client machine activity caused the system to dial up and hey presto no problems.

Now, if a client machine tries to connect, it wont. Of interest is the mail server which sits on the same machine as wingate (so local) and kicks in every 5 minutes, does cause connection (and thats required DNS) after which everything is OK.

The client browers error messages are indicating its a DNS issue, the dialer is never invoked so the initial DNS request from the client browser has not triggering that event and I am seeing error 10065, socket error in the DNS resolver logs.

Incidently, I have seen comments recently which suggest that there should be entries in the windows dialer instance for the DNS and not in the resolver list.

So, what changed form 6.2.2 to 6.6.1 which might be the cause and also, what is your prefered method of DNS resolution? Is it to have my ISP DNS server addresses in the windows dialer instance and nothing in the resolver list or visa versa.

This issue is irritating rather than disasterous because the email server brings up the link anyway but its frustrating.

Cheers
Neil
P.S. overall, 6.6.1 does seem to be much quicker that 6.2.2, is this and illusion?

[adrien]

Hi Neil

Sounds like several issues.

1. DNS config.

By default the DNS resolver in WinGate will use any DNS server known to the OS. When you dial up the internet, the PPP connection phase sets up a DNS server for the OS. You can see this if you are connected to the internet with "ipconfig /all" from the command line. So, when the internet is connected, WinGate will see the new DNS server.

So the short answer is that you don't need to manually set DNS servers for WinGate to use just because you may be on dialup.

2. Auto-dialing.

Depending on how your clients are configured, the first thing they do when a user types in a URL or goes to a bookmark varies. If the browser is configured to use a proxy, then the browser normally just connects to the proxy and sends a request. If the browser isn't configured to use a proxy, the first thing it will do is a DNS lookup for the site in the URL.

So there are different places in code where WinGate attempts a dialup connection.

The DNS server in WinGate has a setting "Allow request to initiate dialer". If you have this set, then a DNS lookup will cause a dial, else it won't.

The various proxies also attempt a dial before making a connection.

However just looking in the code, the WWW proxy tries the DNS lookup before attempting the dial. Since this won't actually trigger a dial (since it doesn't go via the DNS service, only the DNS resolver), then this would mean the lookup would fail.

So I'll make it do the check before the DNS lookup, which should put it back to pre 6.6 behaviour.

However.... I though all OSes from NT4 onwards had built-in auto-dialing? Is there any way you can enable auto-dialing in the OS? I was actually hoping to strip dialup out of WinGate and rely on the OS...

Cheers

Adrien

[adrien]

Hi Neil

Try this one.

http://www.wingate.com/downloads/WinGat ... 00-USE.EXE

Regards

Adrien