DNS settings on Windows and Linux. How to check DNS settings?

In the modern market for ensuring the reliability and security of the Internet connection, a wide variety of services are beginning to appear more and more often, and in particular, a special place is given to DNS servers. Setting up such servers for many people is a rather laborious task. However, at the end you get extremely reliable and secure servers that provide basic protection, as well as parental control, that is, blocking unwanted, malicious and even dangerous websites.

However, the most important element that affects how efficient your DNS will work is the settings for this server, which must be done with the utmost care.

What is DNS?

DNS is a specialized distributed system for determining the correspondence between a computer's numeric IP address and its name. Such addressing is the most convenient from the point of view of machine processing of all kinds of routing tables, but at the same time it is absolutely unacceptable for human use. After all, it is much more difficult for a person to remember sets of a huge number of numbers compared to meaningful names.

Initially, tosimplify interaction, and also make it easier for users to configure the DNS server itself, use specialized tables that match numerical addresses to individual machine names, and such tables have been preserved to this day and are actively used by various old application programs. In particular, we are talking about files named hosts. Today, most users know various Internet resources by their domain names, and this statement is true not only for the addresses of various websites, but also for email addresses.

At the same time, it is the individual domain name of the server that occupies the dominant place in any address.

Why do we need DNS servers?

Thus, you can determine the main purpose that the DNS server setting has and its further use:

• Get unique information about the IP address of a certain server according to its name and vice versa.
• Routing various emails.
• Providing full information about what are serving servers of certain protocols in the network.

Why is proper tuning important?

For example, in Ubuntu setting up DNS at a detailed level requires some knowledge, as well as a full understanding of what these settings are. In this case, there can be no question ofexperiment by changing the server within a particular company. After all, if the DNS setup in Ubuntu is carried out with at least one reckless action, then the entire network of this company will be little more than a large number of wires, since not a single service will be able to work properly.

But many self-confident users like to enter all settings exclusively by hand. And this applies even to such simple things as entering an IP address, subnet mask, as well as the gateway address and DNS settings on the computer. But in fact, many people have been automating such processes for a long time.

Windows 8

1. To set up a server in this operating system, you will first need to move the mouse to the lower left corner of the screen, click the "Start" button, and then open the "Control Panel" through the context menu.
2. Now go to the "Network and Internet" section, then "Network Control Center" and now go to "Change adapter settings".
3. In the menu that appears, you will need to select the appropriate network connection from the list. After you find it, right-click on it and select "Properties".
4. In the appeared list "The checked components are used by this connection" you should select the parameter "Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IP)" and also click the "Properties" button.
5. Now a new window will open, and in particular a tab"General", on which you will need to select the item "Use DNS addresses".
6. After you check the appropriate box, you will be able to enter various data in the lines below and now you can enter the parameters of the DNS server whose settings you are interested in into the fields.

After that, you will need to click "OK" in order for the changes you entered to be saved. Special attention should be paid to the fact that you need to enter the parameters not in the upper lines (IP), but in the lower ones, because otherwise you will not be able to enter the DNS parameters you need, the settings of which must be changed.

Windows 7

1. Again, as in the case of the previous operating system, open the control panel.
2. In the "Network and Internet" section, select "View network status and tasks".
3. In the "View active networks" line, you will need to select the item to the right of the "Connections" button.
4. In the window that appears, you will need to click the "Properties", "Connection Status" button.
5. In the appeared list "The checked components are used by this connection" you should select the parameter "Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IP)" and also click the "Properties" button.
6. Now a new window will open, and in particular the "Network" tab, on which you will need to select the "Use DNS addresses" item.
7. After you check the appropriate box, you will be able to enter various data in the lines below and now you can enter the parameters of the DNS server you are interested in setting in the fields.

Press "OK" and the settings are saved.

Windows XP

Next, we'll look at how to check or change your DNS settings in Windows XP:

1. Through the "Start" menu, go to the "Control Panel".
2. Now select "Network Connections" and look for the one we need.
3. Going to the "General" tab, in the line with the name "Connection status" you will need to select the "Properties" option.
4. Now you need to go back to the "General" section, scroll down, then select the "Internet Protocol (TCP / IP)" section and select "Properties" again.
5. In the "General" section at the bottom, check the box next to "Use DNS addresses", after which you will be able to enter the required data.

Press the "OK" key and close all windows. The settings will be saved.

Windows Vista

Now let's look at how to check DNS settings and make changes to them in the Windows Vista operating system:

1. "Start">"Control Panel".
2. "Network Control Center"
3. In the "Network" section, you will need to select the option"View the status of each connection".
4. In the window that appears in front of you, you need to click on "Properties".
5. As before, scroll down the list until you have the option to select "Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IP)", then click on "Properties".
6. Check the box next to "Use DNS addresses", then you can enter various information.

Click "OK" and close all windows, any settings will be saved.

Linux (Ubuntu)

In Linux, DNS configuration is performed using the resolvconf service, which adjusts parameters based on data received from various subsystems. One of the useful properties of this innovation is that now the file of this system is generated completely automatically, and not individually by each individual program that needs to make various changes, but using a common programming interface. Thus, any changes to this file that you try to make yourself will simply be lost in the end.

In this regard, information about DNS intended for static interfaces must be entered in the specialized etc/network/interfaces file in the search, nameservers, and domain parameters section. In this case, these parameters must correspond to the characteristics specified in the resolv.conf file.

Debian

If you need to configure DNS in Debian, then this procedure is practicallydifferent from the one provided to you by other distributions. You will need to add the individual hostname as well as its IP address to a separate etc/hosts file in order to make various static requests. In order for your computer to subsequently constantly send all kinds of requests to the corresponding server, you just need to add the address of this resource to a separate file etc/resolv.cong.

For example, if you have a computer with the address 192.168.1.1, which will continuously send all kinds of queries to a certain DNS server, then the following line should be present in the resolv.conf file: nameserver 192.168.3.2.

Thus, you can change the settings of DNS servers in any operating systems. It is important to set the exact addresses that the operator provides you, otherwise you simply will not be able to get a connection.