Whither goest thou? What DNS am I using?

[effpeetee]

My ISP is btinternet.com and my original DNS.
Subsequently, I went over to OPEN DNS.

When installing Zone Alarm recently, I noticed an offer to go over to their DNS which I turned down.
Now it seems that it has set me to its DNS. As it hasn't/Can't change my Router (Selected as OPEN DNS.) I am wondering just where I get my downloads from.

Any light you can shed would be appreciated.

Frank - bewitched, bothered and bewildered am I.:mad:

[Spookster]

DNS doesn't have anything to do with where you download stuff from. Domain Name Service (DNS) is simply a service that is typically provided by your Internet Service Provider (ISP) or you can utilize publicly available DNS servers or in this case I am guessing Zone Alarm which is a firewall/security tool is also providing this service if you wanted it.

What DNS does is to create an association between an IP address and the domain name. So instead of having to type in IP addresses into your web browser the you type in a domain name and that request goes through the DNS server which translates it into an IP address so it can be found on the Internet. The DNS server IP is typically defined in your network connection in Windows. If you have a home network your router may also act as a middleman and handle routing the DNS requests in which case the DNS IP would be defined in the router and all the PC's connected would use the IP of the router as their DNS IP.

If the DNS server that Zone Alarm works then it shouldn't be any problems. If you don't want to use theirs then you would need to update your network connection to point back to the servers that your ISP provides you.

I've occasionally used publicly available ones myself when my ISP DNS servers crash for whatever reason. I usually use ones that Google has made available. http://code.google.com/speed/public-dns/

[effpeetee]

Many thanks for your detailed explanation. Obviously then, the router will be the deciding factor as the last in the chain?

Frank



F

[Spookster]

Many thanks for your detailed explanation. Obviously then, the router will be the deciding factor as the last in the chain?

Frank



F

Well assuming your router is setup with defaults it would probably be set to get the DNS addresses automatically from your ISP. And then typically by default when Windows sets up your network connection it is setup to grab it automatically as well so your router would be passing it along. You can however bypass the router by changing it at the Windows network connection level. If ZoneAlarm changed it then I would guess it probably did it there and changed it from getting it automatically to statically defining it with it's own IP addresses for DNS. Easy enough to check. Just look at the properties of the network connection and see whether it is set to get the DNS address automatically or if the primary and secondary DNS addresses are being populated with addresses from ZoneAlarm.

[effpeetee]

Thanks to your useful info, I have now got it right. Altered the network setup.

Many thanks,

Frank.