WinGate 6.0.3 DNS Resolver

[garaytm]

I have several issues with the DNS Resolver in 6.0.3:

1.) The 2 network cards on the machine have the LAN DNS configured on the LAN NIC and the ISP DNS on the Internet NIC. However, it was only checking the ISP DNS for hostnames that exist only on our LAN. When the ISP DNS returned "no such host" then the lookup simply failed.

2.) I manually entered the LAN DNS and ISP DNS and ordered them with the ISP DNS first. Close the properties screen and open it again and the LAN DNS is first again. Set it again with ISP DNS first in the list, apply, save, restart WinGate and check the logs and it's using the LAN DNS first and that is the way they are ordered in the properties list again.

3.) Changes to the settings of the DNS Resolver appear to only take effect when you restart the WinGate service.

4.) What are the criteria (or are there any) such that if the first DNS in the list does not work or returns "no such host" or "no such domain" does it try the next one in the list?

5.) My local domain (as configured in the TCPIP properties of the LAN NIC) does not show up in the properties page and when WinGate was using the ISP DNS, the machines were showing up on the Activity Screen with the ISP domain.


If anyone has any help with these issues I would greatly appreciate it. Otherwise, this version worked great for upgrading from 5.2.3 to 6.0.3 and not having to change anything and it worked fine. I've always been pleagued with IP address issues and the binding and this build looks as though things bound will stay bound even if I change IP addresses on NICs. That is well-worth the upgrade!

-Tim

[adrien]

Hi Tim

This doesn't sound like how it is supposed to operate.

in regards to your points...

1. WinGate (much like the OS), puts all known DNS servers in a single list, and uses all of them in order of how responsive they are. Since the majority of requests that WinGate handles are for internet names, the LAN based DNS server will quickly fall from favour, and WinGate will revert to using the internet on in preference.

Normally WinGate's DNS server wouldn't be used for resolution of local names on the network. If you have a LAN DNS server, normal practise is to point all the client machines to this machine for DNS, and point this machine to WinGate as a forwarder. Then if you exclude this IP address from being used by WinGate's DNS by using the WGOptions application which ships with WinGate, then you can prevent loops. I presume you are running an active directory?

2. It should remember order, but will reorder things in terms of responsiveness as per above.

3. Shouldn't need to restart (except for logging I think).... I will check.

4. Normal practise is that WinGate will try firstly the first responsive one in the list, then all responsive, then all known servers.

5. Sounds like WinGate is using your internal LAN DNS server for reverse resolution of your LAN IP addresses?

If in doubt, turn on debug logging in the DNS resolver.

I had a nice surprise with WinGate the other night at home. Plugged in a USB wireless card and turned on my laptop. my home WinGate recognised the wireless card as internal, bound DHCP to it, and published routes for it over the VPN automatically, so when I turned on my laptop it was on the office VPN without having to do anything. In the old days this would have been a bit of configuration work.

Adrien

[garaytm]

Maybe I'm just not real "up" on DNS and maybe I have our's messed up to begin with...

What if you want WinGate itself to be able to resolve LAN host names? How do you set that up?

Actually, that's what started this because it wasn't resolving LAN host names. We don't have a big LAN so it's not a real issue to just manually replace a host name with it's LAN IP in the setups or whatever. However, it wasn't an issue in previous versions but suddenly became on when upgrading to v6.

The only way I got it to sort of work was:
1.) replace LAN host names with IP addresses.

2.) manually put entries in the HOSTS file

3.) put the LAN DNS in the DNS list of WinGate DNS Resolver

4.) disable the DNS Service

Now servers and clients on our LAN show up in the activity pane and so forth with correct host name/IP. If I didn't disable the DNS Service then the loops started. I have a plain TCP proxy setup on port 53 to point to ISP DNS and the LAN DNS have a forwarder to that.

That's not the best solution since if the 1 ISP DNS is down, there is nothing to tell it to go elsewhere.

It may just be that I've complicated and confused things because our LAN domain has the same domain suffix as our Internet domain.