DNS Director Global Redirection Question

[Aiadi]

Apologies if this is answered before but I am really very new to this DNS business and I trying to get my head around some of the more basic concepts here. I have managed to set my router's DNS queries to go via NextDNS but I am trying to have some devices to use Cloudflare instead by utilising DNS Director. Can someone explain in plain English what the difference is in setting the Global Redirection option to "No redirection" vs choosing "Router"?

 

[ColinTaylor]

"No redirection" means that clients DNS queries will not be intercepted and redirected.

"Router" means that clients DNS queries will be intercepted and redirected to the DNS server specified on the router's LAN - DHCP Server page (or the router itself if it's not defined).

DNS Director

Third party firmware for Asus routers (newer codebase) - RMerl/asuswrt-merlin.ng

github.com

 

[Aiadi]

Thanks Colin. So just to confirm that both of these options would result in all DNS queries going via the service specified in the "WAN-DNS - nextdns in my case" settings if nothing is defined on LAN-DHCP side of things (i.e. will result in the same outcome)?

 

[ColinTaylor]

No, not necessarily. In normal circumstances (i.e. without DNS Director in effect) a client can decide what DNS server it will use. Usually it will use the DNS server suggested by the DHCP server, but it can choose (or be configured) to ignore that and use something else. A common scenario would be an Android IoT device which might be hard-coded to go to 8.8.8.8.

But in the majority of cases you are correct in thinking that clients would use the router's DNS server, which in turn would forward the queries upstream to the WAN DNS servers.