How to get GT-AX11000 to stop including itself as a DHCP nameserver

[AaronCampbell]

I'm trying to get the DHCP on my new GT-AX11000 to serve up custom name servers (like 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4) but the settings page only lets you specify one:

It then adds itself (in this case 192.168.1.1) to that as the second when it serves it up:

$ nmcli -f IP4.DNS device show eno1
IP4.DNS[1]:                             8.8.8.8
IP4.DNS[2]:                             192.168.1.1

So I enabled SSH and took a look

# nvram dump | grep -i dhcp_dns

dhcp_dns1_x=8.8.8.8

There seemed to be a precedent for the `*_dns2_x` naming structure so...:

# nvram set dhcp_dns2_x=8.8.4.4
# nvram dump | grep -i dhcp_dns

dhcp_dns1_x=8.8.8.8
dhcp_dns2_x=8.8.4.4
#nvram commit
# service restart_dnsmasq

Done.

Then a forced release/renew on the client (`sudo dhclient -v eno1`) but it's still serving up only 8.8.8.8 and 192.168.1.1. Anyone know what I'm missing here?

 

[ColinTaylor]

I don't think you're missing anything. AFAIK that's the way it is with stock firmware and it can't be changed.

 

[AaronCampbell]

I don't think you're missing anything. AFAIK that's the way it is with stock firmware and it can't be changed.

I'd love to go back to Merlin, that's what I had on my AC5300, but I don't think the AX11000 is supported. Maybe it will be at some point

 

[JagoUK]

Have you tried 8.8.8.8,8.8.4.4

 

[AaronCampbell]

Have you tried 8.8.8.8,8.8.4.4

Commas don't seem to be allowed in the field.

 

[ColinTaylor]

What is the use case here? You can manually specify two DNS servers on the WAN page and let the DHCP server default to issuing the router's own IP address to clients.

 

[AaronCampbell]

What is the use case here? You can manually specify two DNS servers on the WAN page and let the DHCP server default to issuing the router's own IP address to clients.

The issue is that I have one main Asus, the AX11000, that handles DHCP. I have a couple other Asus routers that are NOT part of the AiMesh that essentially handle more secure sub networks and connect them to the main network. When accessing them from their IP, they all want to redirect me to router.asus.com, which then points to 192.168.1.1 (the IP of the DHCP issuer and served by it's name server from what I can tell). Similar to this person:

https://www.reddit.com/r/HomeNetworking/comments/al6qxb

I'm dealing with it right now by just modifying my local hosts file based on what I'm working on, but it's annoying.

Another weird thing: somewhere along the way the main router has stopped redirecting to router.asus.com but still points it to itself:

#nslookup router.asus.com 192.168.1.1
...
Name:    router.asus.com
Address: 192.168.1.1

If I can figure out what I did to stop the redirect maybe I don't need to worry about the name server issue (although knowing me it'll still bug me)

 

[ColinTaylor]

I see. I've not experienced that problem with the router switching the web interface from an IP address to URL. Must be something about the stock firmware.

Being able to specify two DNS servers in DHCP won't help you with this. All the clients I've ever seen will only query the first server in their list. They only use the second name server if the first one doesn't respond with a second or so (e.g. it is offline).

So the reddit thread is suggesting that if the name "router.asus.com" doesn't resolve (i.e. the DNS server returns NXDOMAIN) it will continue using the IP address. If so then theoretically all you need to do is specify a valid external DNS server in DHCP like you already have.

C:\>nslookup router.asus.com
Server:  RT-AC68U.home.lan
Address:  192.168.1.1

Name:    router.asus.com
Address:  192.168.1.1


C:\>nslookup router.asus.com 8.8.8.8
Server:  dns.google
Address:  8.8.8.8

*** dns.google can't find router.asus.com: Non-existent domain

 

[Scottp]

In WAN setting do you have "connect DNS server automatically"? I think this causes the router to take the ISP provided DNS server and run dnsmasq on the router so dhcp gets handed your router as a DNs server? If you uncheck that option then two boxes appear for dns1 and dns2 which I think are these in nvram.

wan_dns1_x=1.1.1.1
wan_dns2_x=8.8.8.8

I have zenwifi xt8, things may be a bit different. Its confusing that dns is in two places - the WAN config and LAN/DHCP