Originally Posted by
serpens
Is that related to a text file (that I don't recall) that listed sites and IP numbers? I remember editing such a file a couple of computers and several OS upgrades ago.
Back to routers, do most routers allow the router's administrator to edit a list DNS servers? (Looking at my router's web interface, I see a page called Static Routing where I can apparently add server, although I wouldn't know what subnet mask to use.)
More importantly, I have added the Cloudfare servers in my computer's network settings. Does that mean the Cloudfare servers get used even if they are not listed in the router's list of DNS servers? Thanks for the continuing education.
When you browse to "www.google.com" your computer has no notion of what "www.google.com" means. It needs assistance translating the label "www.google.com" to an IP address (i.e. a form of identification an addressing for computers, imagine a postcode). This help comes in the form of a
Domain
Name
System (DNS) server. These are operated by multiple companies, such as your ISP, Google, Cloudflare, etc. Collectively, they provide a service similar to a phonebook for computers.
For the file you edited, you're likely referring to the
hosts file, which can be used to override specific hostnames either to assign an IP address or redirect to (or block) a different address (a hostname being a human-readable label for a computer).
Your computer will attempt to resolve the domain name "google.com" by querying in the following order -- each level can be considered an "override" and takes precedence, so in other words, resolution occurs as follows:
1) hosts file (if any entries apply for the current query, otherwise fallback to local DNS server)
2) local DNS server (if set on your computer's network interface, otherwise fallback to router DNS server)
3) local network DNS server (if set in your router configuration, otherwise fallback to your ISP's DNS server)
Every router I've ever touched has allowed you to set the DNS server addresses. Static Routing is slightly different -- if a packet (i.e. computer message) has a destination of A, you can set a static route such that your router instead sends that packet to a destination of B. Imagine if say, you physically moved a computer from one building to another, and it has a new IP address.
Anyway, I'm sure some networking nerd will find something in my description to nitpick, but hopefully this helps give you a better understanding of how this works at a high level.
