From: peter (Peter da Silva) Date: 16:12 on 03 May 2004 Subject: Microsoft DNS Client Service They should have called this the "Ignore DNS Configuration" service. Or the "Keep DNS from working" service. Or the "Not DNS but we'll fake it" service. You know how Sun and other companies have occasionally gone "you know what would be really nifty? A local resolver-only name server to cache gethostbyname results!" and implemented something that may speed name lookups a little but at the cost of making DNS problems harder to fix? Microsoft has done them one better. They have this thing that grabs names from anywhere it can, including "browsing" (that is, believe whatever lies any nearby computers might tell you), WINS, NDS, and whatever DNS server it thinks is "best" (ignoring the resolver order you specified). And they have the affrontery to call it the "DNS Client Service". This is a lie only exceeded by NT4's claim that UNIX (BSD) printing was "Microsoft TCP/IP printing". AND they turn it on by default. Hate them, I does.
From: peter (Peter da Silva) Date: 15:14 on 03 Sep 2004 Subject: Microsoft DNS Client Service YAR SCURVY BEGGAR! If you're going to intercept DNS requests and replace them with random names you pick up from WINS, browsing, yarrow stalks, and entrails of small animals, will you at least add some code that goes "hey, I'm getting a failure here, why don't I go back and give DNS another shot"?
From: Phil Pennock Date: 15:18 on 03 Sep 2004 Subject: Re: Microsoft DNS Client Service On 2004-09-03 at 09:14 -0500, Peter da Silva wrote: > YAR SCURVY BEGGAR! If you're going to intercept DNS requests and > replace them with random names you pick up from WINS, browsing, > yarrow stalks, and entrails of small animals, will you at least > add some code that goes "hey, I'm getting a failure here, why don't > I go back and give DNS another shot"? Is it 'intercepting', or are the hostname resolution routines using other sources first, much as Suns will use NIS+ maps, etc etc? If it's cached a failure, have you tried ipconfig /flushdns, that ever-so-handy tool for dealing with the broken cache-timeouts in the MS name-service cache? *mutters darkly about 5 minute TTLs being 24 hour TTLs for Windows-using customers*
From: peter (Peter da Silva) Date: 15:36 on 03 Sep 2004 Subject: Re: Microsoft DNS Client Service > Is it 'intercepting', or are the hostname resolution routines using > other sources first, much as Suns will use NIS+ maps, etc etc? If you stop the service, name resolution through other source (WINS, etc) still works, and DNS requests start working as expected. Among other things, the DNS Client service ignores the name server order, caches failures, and returns WINS and browsed names for unqualified hostnames... which is fun when someone changes the name of his laptop to same name as some non-windows server people are using from Windows. > If it's cached a failure, have you tried ipconfig /flushdns, that > ever-so-handy tool for dealing with the broken cache-timeouts in the MS > name-service cache? No, I didn't know about that one, and I'm glad I didn't, because then I'd have had people do that instead of just turning the service off. I have had zero problems reported due to people turning it off, and no repeat complaints due to any of the above problems. Near as I can tell the only legitimate use for this service is to let people get some kind of DNS in an environment where DNS is broken or nonexistent (eg, on a Windows-only Workgroup or NT4 Domain).
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