New Full Fibre 900 - Intermittent DNS issues throughout the day

[jasr2024]

I moved from Virgin to BT only a week ago and the intermittent daily DNS issues are driving me made.

No change the internal infrastructure but periodically throughout the day, devices fail to resolve names. Even a simple test to google.com gives no results, but ping 8.8.8.8 and all is okay.

I can change my own laptop's DNS to point elsewhere, but unable to on my work device, and the family are getting just as annoyed on their mobiles and game consoles etc. Nor should be need to change the DNS settings.

The only way to resolve this is to power cycle the router.

Has anyway experienced this with BT, is it common, and was there a work around you made to resolve this?

Jas  

[naylor2006]

Does everyone connect directly to the router via WIFI or is there other access points?

Is the same issue there for wired and wireless?

I have experienced DNS issues with various ISP's over the years but sometimes I dont even know if its their fault or their upstream, or something else, DNS is tricky to resolve but if changing the DNS server on your laptop works without fail then that does point to BT DNS servers or the maybe the cache on the router, if of course it is nothing funky internally, rebooting the router would probably clear that and fresh DNS requests then work. 

Nowadays I use my own router and a Pi-Hole as my DNS server, the BT Smart Hub does not allow you to change your DNS server from a central point so you are a bit stuck, I think you may need to start pushing down the BT Technical support way and log a ticket, maybe swap out the router to test.

[jasr2024]

I know what's going to happen with calling BT and have been proficient in IT (Currently Head of) so know it is DNS 100%.

Happens to both wired and wireless so I may end up doing something different but not looking forward to calling tech support to tell me to unplug everything, wait for for 15 minutes, and call back to go round and round in circles.

I was actual just wondering if anyone else had the same type of issue.

Cheers

[naylor2006]

I also am an IT Head….which is why I chose to run my own gear, then you have the freedom of your own config and own troubleshooting.

If you know enough and don’t want to deal with 1st line tech, then remove that issue all together.

[ch]

I'd try hard coding the DNS settings on your device and see if it solves the problem. At least then you can point to the router DNS being flaky.

Also running a script which continually tries to resolve google.com or whatever would be useful to show it working, then failing.

[licquorice]

I guess you didn't read the original post.

[jasr2024]

Yeah, I had Meraki kit and which I left this inline. BT was so much cheaper than Virgin for what we use it for, but it has come as a pain.

[naylor2006]

Yeah I was with Virgin, couldnt wait to leave as soon as Openreach put in fibre, before Virgin had the monopoly around here for so long.

I actually made the shift when with Virgin, switched the Router into modem only mode, setup a DHCP WAN on my ER-X and that was it really. Moving to BT I just had to change to PPPOE which was a bit more config but not too hard. I use a Pi-Hole now which uses Clareflare and Google DNS as its upstream, its also cool because I can have local DNS now for everyone and not just a hostfile on a given machine.

Anyway, I can use this setup with any ISP without having to worry and if you know a little and dont want to rely on technical support I'd suggest going this way. Well actually if I ever go to sky their config remains unclear, DHCP Prefix Delegation or Option 61 for your WAN interface and there seems so much trouble with it based on their forums, i'd probably avoid sky based on that, different discussion though.

[rbz5416]

I think that as only you are reporting this issue, it's not a wider BT DNS problem.

Whenever there's a question mark over a possible faulty SH2, I favour prompt replacement to prove one way or the other. You already know what lies ahead with trying to get a replacement from BT, so I tend to suggest Facebook Marketplace or similar, where there's usually a cheap supply.

Depending on how often this happens & whether you can take sole ownership of the connection for a while, you could also try a direct PPPoE connection from the laptop. But if the work one is tied down to the extent you can't manually add DNS, then it may not allow creation of a new connection either.

[Keith_Beddoe]

Of course one solution is to disable DHCP on the home hub, and use your own DHCP server, and then you can configure it for any other DNS service.

As has been mentioned already, Pi-Hole is one option, which works very well. Another is to connect a cheap wireless access point which has its own DHCP server. You can always disable the wireless section, and just use it for DHCP.

Many other network devices have DHCP server options, but they are normally disabled by default.