JJ said:
On the "General" tab of "Internet Protocol (TCP/IP)" dialog. It only
has two groups of setting: the IP and the DNS. On the DNS, I chose
"Use the following DNS server addresses". And the DNS address is
entered there.
There is an Advanced button there; however, if you only specify a
maximum of 2 DNS servers than you don't need to go into the advanced
settings. The order for DNS servers listed in the General tab will be
the same order listed under the advanced properties under the DNS tab.
Using Windows (XP). Last time I see a custom dialer for internet
access was in Windows 3. The modem do have a dialer but it's just a
helper that's still use Windows builtin dialer, so it's not worth the
memory.
Who is your ISP? As I recall, and why I asked about a 3rd party dialer,
is that AOL did and still does provide their own dialer app. If you use
that then you don't get any configurable options, like IP address and
DNS server(s).
If you are using the Windows dialer along with a connectoid defined in
the Network applet in Control Panel (for use by the Windows dialer, not
by some other dialer) then the DNS settings you specified will get used.
nslookup need a host name or IP address in order to retrieve its
registered DNS addresses. If I give nslookup the wrong address the result
to be wrong. That's why it's not reliable. Besides, the queried data
might already have expired.
What would be the point of running nslookup without telling it what you
wanted to look up? That would be like opening a phone book but you
don't know the name of whomever you wanted to look up. Humans like
names but computers use numbers hence the need for a DNS lookup. The
point of using nslookup to to do a lookup so obviously you have to
specify a hostname or optionally an IP address (if the DNS server
supports reverse lookups).
What did you expect to get as a result from nslookup if you didn't tell
it what to lookup?
If you give a hostname that isn't defined in the DNS server to which you
connect then that lookup fails. The DNS server then passes the request
to the next upstream DNS server. It can keep failing until the request
goes all the way back to the nameserver the domain uses as the DNS
server to equate their hostnames to IP addresses.
http://compnetworking.about.com/od/dns_domainnamesystem/f/dns_servers.htm
See the 4th paragraph under the "DNS Server Hierarchy" section. If no
DNS server can return an IP address (i.e., none of them have an A record
for the hostname that you specified) then you get back a failure on the
lookup. Nothing "wrong" was returned. Either the hostname was defined
in one of the DNS servers and you get a positive result (the IP address)
or you get a negative result (a failure to find an A record listing the
IP address for that hostname).
Just because a domain is defined doesn't mean it has a server running
there with one, or more, hostnames that are listening for connection
requests. Anyone can register a domain and then decide later whether or
not to use it by running a server program on a host and adding their
host to their nameserver (which they or someone else might operate).
If you try to lookup vanguard.lh, yep, you won't get back an IP address.
The TLD (top-level domain) of LH is not yet defined. No one can
register a domain using that TLD hence why it use it as my bogus e-mail
address in my posts. Any spammers that cull my e-mail address won't
even be able to establish a connection. The sending mail server won't
even try to find a host to which to connect. They'll see an invalid TLD
and immediately error out the mail session. So if you try to run
"nslookup vanguard.lh" you will get a negative result. That is NOT a
wrong result. It is a correct result showing that no such domain is
defined in any DNS server.
If you think you are experiencing problems with DNS caching (of both
positive and negative results) then you can edit the registry entries
that define how long to keep those cached entries. In the past, DNS
servers were updated maybe once per day and why Microsoft selected a
timeout interval of 1 day for positive results. Nowadays DNS servers
are updated at about 4-hour intervals. So, if you want, you can edit
the positive cached timeout to lower it. You can do the same to
shortenn the interval for negative cached entries (DNS lookup failures).
I changed my positive cache timeout to 15 minutes and negative cache
count down to zero.
You could just set the DNS Client service (that caches the
positive/negative DNS lookups) so it is Disabled. That way, you won't
be caching any entries. Be aware that this also means that your host
will have to do a DNS lookup for EVERY hostname, including the positive
results. That means if a web page has a thousand links to other content
even at the same domain and host that your host will have to perform a
thousand DNS lookups. With positive results getting cached, your host
would only have to do one DNS lookup and would use its local and much
faster cache to find all those other same-domain links in the web page
you are trying to load. DNS lookups are a LOT slower than using a local
cache. If you disable the DNS Client then it will take longer to
retrieve all the same-domain linked content in a web page. There are
exceptions to this, like you have a ridiculously sized 'hosts' files,
like the mega-sized pre-compiled MVPS 'hosts' file.
MS KB article 318803 tells you how to disable the DNS Client service or
how to edit the registry entries regarding caching for positive and
negative entries (separate caches for each).
You will need to better define what you mean by "wrong" regarding a DNS
lookup.
Regardless of your claim about the inaccuracy of the returned results,
that doesn't obviate WHICH server was used for the lookup. So when you
*do* run nslookup, which DNS server did it say that it used?
I would be surprised to learn I had said that.