dnsmasq[2328]: nameserver x.x.x.x refused to do a recursive query - Router: Asus RT-AX88U

[bbbuk]

Hi,

Could someone assist me with an issue i'm having with my Asus RT-AX88U?

For the past month since i've had this router, I find that router intermittently plays up and stops anything from connecting to WAN.

I spent last month troubleshooting and only pattern I could find was that when I connect either of the two work laptops.

Checking the log around the time I try to connect these devices, I found the following:-

dnsmasq-dhcp[2328]: Ignoring domain x.com for DHCP host name 8P9JNH2
dnsmasq-dhcp[2328]: DHCPACK(br0) 192.168.100.34 28:c6:3f:18:68:48 8P9JNH2
dnsmasq[2328]: nameserver 192.168.100.1 refused to do a recursive query

After this, anything connected to router just refuses to work resulting in a reboot.

I googled the recursive error and found this:

Q: Dnsmasq sometimes logs "nameserver xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx refused
   to do a recursive query" and DNS stops working. What's going on?

A: Probably the nameserver is an authoritative nameserver for a
   particular domain, but is not configured to answer general DNS
   queries for an arbitrary domain. It is not suitable for use by
   dnsmasq as an upstream server and should be removed from the
   configuration. Note that if you have more than one upstream
   nameserver configured dnsmasq will load-balance across them and
   it may be some time before dnsmasq gets around to using a
   particular nameserver. This means that a particular configuration
   may work for sometime with a broken upstream nameserver
   configuration.

The above makes sense to me as the domain of our work laptops, we don't own and doesnt exist (don't ask )

The above answer is talking about removing from configuration or something as in:
"It is not suitable for use by dnsmasq as an upstream server and should be removed from the configuration"

Any ideas if i'm on the right track?

 

[dave14305]

What are your WAN DNS servers? I’m trying to understand why dnsmasq would be trying to send requests to itself (if the router is 192.168.100.1)?

The “Ignoring domain” message is pretty common for work machines on home networks.

 

[bbbuk]

Thanks for reply @dave14305

That IP is the gateway. Ultimately, i'm using my ISP DNS servers on WAN side.

It's just weird that two work machines I switch between are the ones that can (but not always) basically stop anything else from working the second it connects. Well that's what it appears to be.

Would specifying likes of 8.8.8.8 and 1.1.1.1 for DNS servers on WAN side stop the "nameserver refused to do a recursive query" error and therefore hopefully will no longer stop all traffic?