Changing the DNS entries delivered by DHCP on a Velop 4200 mesh system

[BigBillsd]

My Cuz bought a new Velop system a couple months back and his whole household is complaining about the new crappy internet. We tracked the issue to DNS not being available on and off. The sys defaults to using itself as a DNS Proxy. So DHCP is giving out the gateway address as the DNS server IP. I want to change it two a couple entries that I have found always work. 8888 and 8844 in dotted decmil notation. But he cannot find an entry for that. We found what I think is the routers dns entrys and changed it. Did not get propaged to the clients, released, renewed and reboots all of them and the router. So my guess is there is a place under the DHCP interface but he cannot find it. Linksys offshore was pretty useless and solved nothing. So I am here, anyone using a Velop? Is the DNS Entries for DHCP leases hidden? Or what am I missing. It seems like its managed from the cloud so I had him logon local to the router. We do see the router dns has been changed to the four eights.. just not getting in the leases... -Bill

 

[Tech9]

Here:

Configuring the DNS Settings of your Linksys Mesh system

Configuring the DNS Settings of your Linksys Mesh system

www.linksys.com

DHCP providing router's IP as DNS is normal. Use OpenDNS, Cloudflare or Quad9 filtering DNS services. At least some malware protection.

 

[BigBillsd]

It might be normal, but it doesnt work well and its not wanted. Are you trying to say it cannot be changed on a Velop?

Here:

Configuring the DNS Settings of your Linksys Mesh system

Configuring the DNS Settings of your Linksys Mesh system

www.linksys.com

DHCP providing router's IP as DNS is normal. Use OpenDNS, Cloudflare or Quad9 filtering DNS services. At least some malware protection.

 

[Tech9]

It might be normal, but it doesnt work well and its not wanted.

It works perfectly. The issue your Cuz has is somewhere else. All home routers advertise default gateway as DNS, including Asus and Netgear - the routers most discussions are about on this forum. Linksys community support forum is here (they will tell you the same):

LinksysInfo.org

Discussion board of 3rd Party firmwares for ASUS, Linksys, Netgear, and other WiFi Routers.

www.linksysinfo.org

Test what DNS servers are in use here:

DNS Leak Test

The DNS Leak Test is a tool used to determine which DNS servers your browser is using to resolve domain names. This test attempts to resolve 50 randomly generated domain names, of which 25 are IPv4-only and 25 are IPv6-only.

browserleaks.com

 

[BigBillsd]

Thats not what I have experienced at home and in industry. I have gone thru many WiFi Routers and Access Points over the last 20+ years. I have not had one router that didnt allow you to change the DNS addresses delivered via DHCP. I have always set that up with real DNS addresses, I have always used DHCP Option 6 to configure DNS Entries for clients. I dont remember if it was in the BOOTP rfc when we were using that to configure clients in the early nineties. My Pepwave in my bus and my TP-Link at home have no issues configuring DHCP Option 6. It would be extremely hard to imagine someone would make network equipment and not impliment the DHCP RFC's in full. I will go over to that linksys forum, as I would tell him to return that junk if it cannot be done. Its not cheap from what I can tell. Oh, i tested the eero pro a few months back before i went with tplink and it could also be configured correctly to hand out specific DNS ip addresses.

 

[Tech9]

The router runs local caching DNS server (dnsmasq in most cases) and answers local LAN queries as well. WAN queries are forwarded to upstream resolvers, in your case what you have set in Advanced Settings. This is how it works and there is no issue with it. Some custom firmwares (like Asuswrt-Merlin, user selectable option) can prevent router IP advertisement, but for different reasons. Not because the default setup doesn't work well.

 

[BigBillsd]

The router runs local caching DNS server (dnsmasq in most cases) and answers local LAN queries as well. WAN queries are forwarded to upstream resolvers, in your case what you have set in Advanced Settings. This is how it works and there is no issue with it. Some custom firmwares (like Asuswrt-Merlin, user selectable option) can prevent router IP advertisement, but for different reasons. Not because the default setup doesn't work well.

I wish there were no issues with it. But there is with the Velop. I don't want him to have to manually change each device, so I will suggest he get a real router to side step the velop or return it. Option 6 is in the spec for a reason. Things don't always work. And the dns caching is the problem with his setup. Since they appear to have left that out, I wonder what else they left out. This thread has been not been helpful. I am signing off.

 

[ColinTaylor]

Does the link provided in post #2 not provide the solution you're asking for? It seems to suggest that by selecting Manual under Local Network Settings > DNS Settings you can specify what DNS servers are pushed to the DHCP clients.

 

[Tech9]

Threads for Velop DNS issues exist on Reddit. Some say disabling IPv6 helps. The information is months old though. The problem is not in router IP advertising as default DNS. Perhaps Linksys has firmware issues with this particular system. The latest firmware for MX4200 is from 02/04/2022.

MX4200, MX4200C, MX8000, MX8400C, MX12600 Downloads

MX4200, MX4200C, MX8000, MX8400C, MX12600 Downloads

www.linksys.com

 

[BigBillsd]

Does the link provided in post #2 not provide the solution you're asking for? It seems to suggest that by selecting Manual under Local Network Settings > DNS Settings you can specify what DNS servers are pushed to the DHCP clients.

No it does not. That change actually changed the routers DNS settings. (which is good) but those new DNS entries do NOT get appended to the lease, so all machines still have the gateway address as the DNS address. Sucks! I thought maybe it was a Mac issue, but I changed my DNS entries on my Cisco router and pushed the release and renew buttons on my only Mac it changed immediatly.

 

[BigBillsd]

Threads for Velop DNS issues exist on Reddit. Some say disabling IPv6 helps. The information is months old though. The problem is not in router IP advertising as default DNS. Perhaps Linksys has firmware issues with this particular system. The latest firmware for MX4200 is from 02/04/2022.

MX4200, MX4200C, MX8000, MX8400C, MX12600 Downloads

MX4200, MX4200C, MX8000, MX8400C, MX12600 Downloads

www.linksys.com

If I could change the DNS entries the leases get then my current issue would be fixed. It really is supposed to work like that, not matter what anyone might think. Standards exist for a reason. So folks arent just making shirt up and saying its good. Or it works or what the heck.. Lets call a turd a turd, not a brown souffle!

 

[Tech9]

With router IP as DNS server you don't need to renew the lease to clients on upstream DNS change. As I said above, it's very common, convenient and it works perfectly. The clients still use what you have selected as upstream DNS servers. The issue you have is perhaps Velop product specific, not the way DNS server is advertised to clients in general. You may have a different opinion, of course. No DNS issues here:

 

[BigBillsd]

With router IP as DNS server you don't need to renew the lease to clients on upstream DNS change. As I said above, it's very common, convenient and it works perfectly. The clients still use what you have selected as upstream DNS servers. The issue you have is perhaps Velop product specific, not the way DNS server is advertised to clients in general. You may have a different opinion, of course. No DNS issues here:

View attachment 40302

I completly disagree, If it actually worked "perfectly" I wouldn't have created this thread. I spent 30 years implementing all sorts of systems for north and south American Multinational corporations. Its fairly simple for me to spot network issues. And this Velop DHCP is piss poorly implemented. So far the only time it works perfectly all the time is if we hard code the external DNS servers on each client since DHCP either isn't fully implemented or maybe just not correctly on the Velop equipment.

 

[Tech9]

I don’t see mass complaining of this Velop system, perhaps you need to reset it to defaults and try again. Look at my profile how many home routers I have in my collection, they all advertise router’s own IP as DNS to clients and they all work with no issues. I’m a bit surprised you haven’t seen this in your IT carrier.

 

[BigBillsd]

Never seen it before. Who would think a large network hardware vendor wouldn't follow the RFC for DHCP when writing their firmware. Why would anyone care that the masses arent complaining about something. That's marketing. I would guess most folks have no idea what either acronym stand for. Let alone know they are missing something. They probably just think their network provider sucks... thats what my Cuz thought. I helped him install a tool that showed only DNS wasn't working and the ISP's network was working fine. Just no one in his house could get to their websites do to names not resolving. This thread is still not going anywhere. I am just going to have him ship it back and we will find someone's product that builds real networking hardware. I always thought linksys was a solid company, now I am not so sure anymore its not just cheap junk. -Bill

 

[ColinTaylor]

Never seen it before. Who would think a large network hardware vendor wouldn't follow the RFC for DHCP when writing their firmware.

This has nothing to do with following RFC's. There's nothing in the DHCP RFC that says what DNS servers are sent to the client when it asks for them. The inability to configure the Velop to send a custom DNS list is entirely a bug/design feature/limitation (call it what you will) in the Velop firmware.

 

[Tech9]

Why would anyone care that the masses arent complaining about something.

There is nothing to complain about the way DNS is advertised to clients. I don't see many Velop related complaints either. The entries you have found always work are Google public DNS servers. Google doesn't know what your problem is. You'll have to figure it out with your IT experience. Good luck!

 

[Soldier]

I’m seeing the same issues that the OP has mentioned,
I do believe that the dns is being “propagated” to clients when changing to 8.8.8.8 for example, because we can check this on sites like http://whatsmydnsserver.com/
sure if you use things like dig / nslookup to test, you might see the local router being prepresnted as the DNS source, but using the online dns server test you can confirm otherwise.

The issue I am still trying to isolate and identify the actual cause. Linksys support have recommended to test with homekit router disabled (enabled by default even if you haven’t paired it to a “home”) - I don’t have the capacity at the moment to turn it off as I’ll need to reconfigure some devices + child devices if I do.

I was able to eliminate the issue by turning off ipv6 and using google dns 8’s. Though the same config with cloud fare doesn’t work, so I feel like it’s not a complete workaround. That and the fact that disabling ipv6 seems like a wrong approach. I only disabled it previously as my old isp didn’t support ipv6 at all, so there as no loss in doing So.

I’ve changed ISP now and they support ipv6 natively so I want to use that.


To add more to my experiences, I started to believe it to be a DNS issue as I would be able to ping internet IP address without issue, but pinging a domain name would time out. Though I definitely isolated it to be a client issue and not the router itself, as I would be able to ping domain names on the velop web interface while mid-issue.
Today I thought to check the DHCP client leases on the velop after the issue recovered, and I saw that all 4 devices that were having the issue at the same time were all given a new lease when they reconnected. Not sure if this is a coincidence yet,

 

[BKFC]

I don't know if this is related or not. I have a MX4000 system with DHCP set to provide IP addresses 192.168.10.XXX and DNS server 192.168.10.1. Most of my home devices are manually set, but recently I've discovered that some guests (and some hand-held devices like a firestick) receive a correct DHCP IP address but DNS 192.168.10.201, which results in the device being connected locally but not outside the router. I cannot figure out where the .201 comes from. For guests with laptops, I can configure manually and that works fine, but some devices cannot be configured that way.