Why was this removed? Bring it back!

[K7L3]

Seriously, bring this back.
It's extremely annoying that's it's not a feature anymore and honestly it's just plain rude to take it away.

[StuartHK]

It’s only hearsay, I think, but I have heard that it is because of the Investigatory Powers Act and the ISP being obliged to track which sites you have been to.  Obviously one way of doing this is by making you use their DNS servers and then keep logs.  Another reason for using your own equipment.

[Crimliar]

It's far more likely that it makes tech support much simpler if you can rule out DNS config mistakes.

[verkosh]

I'm inclined to agree it's likely to make tech support easier.

Although it would be nice to have it in advanced settings for power users

[Midnight_Voice]

@K7L3 

Sky recently had an outage where Sky and Now Broadband users lost access to the DNS servers Sky use.

Users were able to restore their internet access by switching to alternate DNS servers, such as the Google ones.

BT must be mighty confident that there will be no such occurrence on their network.

[Keith_Beddoe]

There is nothing to stop you changing the DNS settings on individual devices, to restore service.

You can also disable DHCP and use your own DHCP server to issue different DNS servers.

Many devices, like wireless access points and NAS, have DHCP servers built in, if you want to use them.

[K7L3 · Accepted solution]

I'm aware there are other ways to do it, I'm very much aware they won't just add it back for a simple switch to an alternative DNS service, so I've had to setup pihole DNS and DHCP but I really didn't want to have too, it still is in their documentation on their website that you can change the DNS settings, but it's no longer there on the router. There's no good reason to not just put it in an advanced settings area if their reasoning is that they are blaming users.

[Crimliar]

Let's be honest here, most users don't even know that they use DNS or DHCP, let alone what these services do.  So if the internet "goes down" it's only a few users who will be thinking "I'll try a different DNS".  You've got to weigh that against the number of users who on seeing a setting they don't understand but are able to change will then go ahead and poke it with a stick!

[StuartHK]

@Midnight_Voice  I'm under the impression, perhaps wrongly, that Sky (& Virgin's) latest equipment has also gone down the same path.

@Keith_Beddoe...but how many ordinary users know that?

[Keith_Beddoe]

Even if the setting was available on the Home Hub, the average user would not know about it, or what settings to use.