endless stream of DNS lookups?

[cwebb2]

hi folks,

I've been trying to get WinGate going on Win2K, with a single Mac on a wifi peer-to-peer network.

In Wingate, all proxies seem to be working ok. But then a strange 'loop' happens, especially in web sessions, when Wingate gets stuck sending out DNS requests to my ISP, endlessly. This 'loop' takes up so much bandwidth (and system resources) that I have a hard time getting the connection (dialup) to disconnect.

The connection will be fine for a bit, perhaps letting me visit one or two web pages without a problem, but then it'll go crazy sending these requests (overloading the dialup connection, so I have to disconnect and shut down WinGate and start up again).

The DNS Service log will show a large number (perhaps 90 per second) of:
Requested: DNS: A lookup "a272.g.akamai.net."
Requested: DNS: A lookup "a272.g.akamai.net."

(or some such site address)

and the DNS Resolver log will show a large number of:

Error: bounce request [054a53ae]<1> to try 3 (no specific and cannot select)
Request: request [054a6eb6] A lookup "a1024.g.akamai.net."
Error: bounce request [054a6eb6]<1> to try 3 (no specific and cannot select)
Request: request [054a89be] A lookup "a272.g.akamai.net."

Is there something I'm missing in the Wingate or the TCP-IP set-up?

There were a couple of points that I was unclear about in the docs - perhaps this is where I'm going wrong:

In the Help, it refers to the Windows Networking configuration, 'Configuring TCP/IP for the WinGate Server' / 'DNS Configuration' it says to:

"Select the ‘Enable DNS‘ option. Enter your user name in the Host box. In the Domain, put in the name of your ISP"

I can't find anywhere that asks for a Hostname or Domain in Win2K's Networking properties.

Also, what is the 'Domain Suffix' (for the 'Domain Suffix search order)?

Are these important details that may be causing my troubles?

And should 'Client for Microsoft Networks' be enabled in both the dial-up Networking preferences as well as the LAN preferences?

Thanks for any help with this. I'm at a loss.

[erwin]

Hi there

This DNS loop sounds like an application on a client machine is requesting this lookup continuously, is there any info on the activity screen in Gatekeeper to show which client machine is making the request?

The only time a DNS server should be entered on a WinGate server machine is on the Interface that is connected to the Internet. Usually the ISP will allocate the required IP address and network details such as upstream DNS servers Gateway etc.

The Interface that connects to the rest of the LAN should not have to have a DNS server entry.

The Domain name/Hostname entries were included in the network properties of earlier Windows versions and the domain suffix setting should not be important to WinGate (only the specified upstream DNS server on the Internet interface as mentioned earlier).

Unless specifically requested by your ISP Client of MS networking does not need to be enabled on the Dial up Interface.

Hope this helps
Erwin

[neil]

You could also try enterting a DNS server's IP manually in to the DNS /WINS resolver in Gatekeeper as well, as WinGate will use this setting first before using the system setting. The logs indicate that WinGate is not aware of any good / useful DNS servers, hence the 'Try 3' line in the logs as this means we've already tried all known DNS servers 3 times to get a response to the look up, but have failed. So by manually entering one this may help. Also when this happens can you still surf from the WinGate machine itself, so by going directly out and not through WinGate?

Regards

Neil

[cwebb2]

Thanks for your replies, guys.

After twisting my head around for three days, and really feeling like I was in an M.C. Escher painting, I got it - even _though_ I had only 4 hours of sleep last nite.

The problem was that I had set up my LAN TCP/IP properties sheet with a DNS nameserver pointing at the adapter itself (192.168,0.1). I could have sworn that's what the Adapter's docs said to do....

The thing that made it difficult is that it would only loop back and "feed-back" on itself when it failed to resolve the DNS online.

Some further questions are forthcoming, I'm sure.

The struggle has forced me to need to understand what I'm doing here - WinGate's docs are a great aid.

Thanks again.

--
Chan