DNS concerns

[DazzaJ]

I currently run though my ISP DNS because I get movies and other downloads without penalizing my quota.
If I change to Amahi DHCP etc I assume I then lose this.
When I run ipconfig /all on my main Windows 7 machine, it displays that my DNS is 192.168.1.10 which is the Amahi.
Does that mean I'm no longer using the ISP DNS? I generally use opendns or google dns on my mobile equip, but the home system is connected to T.V. etc.
I currently have both DHCP still running! I tried turning off the Amahi one, but then some errors start occurring when trying to use.
Both devices, Amahi and my Router say my PC address is 192.168.1.102? Which one is allocating that? I assume my router!

[bigfoot65]

Its not good to use two DHCP. Things can get confused. Recommend you try running with the HDA as the DHCP/DNS server. Only way to know if you lose the capability you mentioned from your ISP is to try it. I don't think you will, but I am not a networking expert.

[jsdraven]

WARNING I get long winded when just before bed. Sorry :/

There is a few things you may want to know for a better understanding.
DHCP is mostly ment for issuing IPs to devices as they join the network.
DNS is what converts url into an ip address. example http://hda/ this is not a global url. so you need a local DNS to translate everything for your local server.

If you try to run more than one DHCP, you will run into IP address conflicts and other miss haps.

If you have an all ready established network with printers and such you may not want to use another IP scheme or DHCP server as it is possible to have those devices issues another IP as is saved in your driver settings. Even if it is set to the winns server name (this is a sudo DNS type event that is done for finding computers by their host name).

The main down side to not using Amahi as your DHCP server is a possible IP address conflict. This would be because during the Amahi setup you set it to use an IP within the DHCP pool.

DHCP pool is a list of address that the server will hand out to connecting devices. example the routers my work issues out have it set to start with IP 192.168.200.100 and up. so if I during my Amahi setup chose 192.168.200.101 My DHCP server would / could issue the same address to another device as it did not have it listed as issued to another since it was "Statically" assigned to the server.

so two ways to fix this set the IP for Amahi out side the routers DHCP pool and continue to use your router for DHCP. Or you need to disable DHCP in your router and just use the Amahi. This will insure you dont over lap it's IP with another device.

so my configuration has my Amahi's IP set to 192.168.200.99 just below my DHCP pool starting at 192.168.200.100. This allows me to use the router. In the routers LAN settings I told it to tell all connecting devices to use Amahi for the primary DNS. This allows me to be lazy and just type hda in my browser's address bar.

[cpg]

you can use a script called:

Code: Select all

hda-change-dns IP1 IP2

then, the HDA will use those two IPs for DNS.

as far as traffic, i think your provider may not use DNS as way to discriminate traffic. maybe IP ranges?

[ciscoh]

you can use a script called:

Code: Select all

hda-change-dns IP1 IP2

then, the HDA will use those two IPs for DNS.

as far as traffic, i think your provider may not use DNS as way to discriminate traffic. maybe IP ranges?

The reason some ISPs will do this based on DNS is because it allows them to control what the user sees when they do a lookup....


for instance if i type in IE "amahi sues apple for silliness", the ISP can intercept that and provide its own search engine results, complete with ads the ISP makes revenue from.