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In my never-ending quest to troubleshoot my network woes, I see more and more references to possible DNS resolver issues. On the "Network Setup" page in my router configuration, I currently have my router set to "Get dns servers automatically from ISP" and then Charter fills in two of their dns server addresses for that. On that particular page I have the option to replace those with two others of my choosing, and I have tried Google's public ones before (8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4) with no real change in results. I was browsing OpenDNS' site and found that they offer free dns service for homes either with or without an account registration. I can add their two dns servers to the configuration page above without an account registration, or I can register an account and then go to the "Dynamic DNS" page in my router configuration and fill in these blanks for the router to defer to...

Dynamic DNS
Use a Dynamic DNS Service

Service Provider

Host Name
User Name
Password

My question(s) are whether it would be necessary/better to do the account registration thing and use the "Dynamic DNS" configuration page, or just add their DNS servers into the "Network Setup" page, or for that matter will doing either one of these even help me with my disconnects/ reconnects? I have RMA'd the Rosewill router from my other thread and still have the same problem with the replacement. I did talk Charter into upgrading the firmware on the Cisco DCP3008 modem from the Dec 2011 build to their July 2012 build, and have still shown disconnects/reconnects in my router logs (Cisco website shows a Jan 2013 build available, but I am stuck with using Charters' older version). Thanks for any insights you can give.

Jeez, you are having one hell of a time there. I can't speak to the Dynamic DNS but I can for the "free" Open DNS servers. I'm running the standard Open DNS servers and I am using the porn blocking Open DNS servers at my sister's house. I can't say that I've seen any speed increase or decrease. Given your situation I would try different DNS servers and see if one is better than the other. Hope that helps.

Really not sure what you are trying to accomplish with the dynamic dns service. I dont think it does what you think it does.

Dynamic DNS = makes your home dhcp address accessible from a 'static' dns entry even if your home IP changes. IE: myhomecomputer.dyndns.org will always point to whatever IP address you have at home, even if it changes due to dhcp.

8.8.8.8 is google's public DNS server, though I have found it to be a bit hit or miss in the past. I tend to use MIT as my primary (18.70.0.160) with google as my secondary on machines that I dont have my own internal DNS server running.

Honestly, at this point I would start to assume you have something wrong internally. You RMA'd that one router, but maybe that model/brand just wont work well with your service? Maybe you have some kind of wiring issue happening? You keep trying to beat a dead horse on this whole thing and I think it is just causing you more headaches. Beg/borrow/steal a router/firewall from someone and see if it has the same problems. Hell, try connecting a PC directly to your cable modem and see if you get disconnects. At this point, i dont see any other options, you need to do some actual troubleshooting to see where the problem is instead of just guessing and assuming you know where it is.

Cut your problem into chunks:

1. Eliminate everything behind the modem, connect a pc directly to the modem. If that still has the issue, try another PC. Still there, its the modem. (EDIT: or something you have configured on your machines, try to use as default of a machine as possible with automatic everything for network settings)
2. if no disconnects above, beg/borrow/steal a firewall from someone. Hook it up with the factory config and the absolute minimum of settings (leave the default LAN IP range for now). Hook up the same PC as in step 1. Dont assume if this works that it is the modem, you still only have a single machine on it.
3. Hook up rest of machines to this device, keeping the same config from step 2.
4. Still working, configure the new router/firewall as you would normally.
5. still working? suck it up and get rid of the rosewill. Well that or accept that the problem is that unit, and no amount of messing with it will fix the problem and move on.

Sorry to be a bit harsh here, but this has been going on entirely too long for a very simple thing. This is pretty basic troubleshooting here. If you cant beg/borrow/steal from someone you know, post here where you are roughly and see if anyone will be nice enough to ship you an old unit of theirs (hell i may have one laying around somewhere).

Major_A wrote:Jeez, you are having one hell of a time there. I can't speak to the Dynamic DNS but I can for the "free" Open DNS servers. I'm running the standard Open DNS servers and I am using the porn blocking Open DNS servers at my sister's house. I can't say that I've seen any speed increase or decrease. Given your situation I would try different DNS servers and see if one is better than the other. Hope that helps.

Thanks for the sympathy Major_A, and thanks both you and egloeckle for the info on the DNS servers (sorry the unfolding saga caused you stress, egloeckle ) . I guess since I do get great speeds then the DNS servers weren't a big factor, instead the disconnects/reconnects have finally been attributed to a combination of things (see previous Rosewill/CHARTER thread dealing with this).

These are my speeds (usually average between 38Mbps>47Mbps upload on a 30Mbps connection )

Most of the time changing dns doesn't help much as your isp will be monitoring their dns infrastructure closely. Adding secondary & tertiary servers for resilience is a good idea.
Using an adblocker is better as some people think tweaking dns helps pages load due to ads on sites. It's the 3rd party ad servers that are the culprits. They take ages to process your browser cookies and serve the content.

kenc51 wrote:Most of the time changing dns doesn't help much as your isp will be monitoring their dns infrastructure closely. Adding secondary & tertiary servers for resilience is a good idea.
Using an adblocker is better as some people think tweaking dns helps pages load due to ads on sites. It's the 3rd party ad servers that are the culprits. They take ages to process your browser cookies and serve the content.

I don't know how I would add secondary DNS servers though, I only have two entry boxes for DNS servers and Charter populates both of them automatically, so it is either use Charters OR use OpenDNS, can't use both at the same time.

I am using FF19 with AdBlock Plus & NoScript as well as blocking a lot of ad servers with PeerBlock, so most of that stuff doesn't even get to load.

You have to add the server ips to the client / pc's under the properties of the network connection

Got it. I added the OpenDNS server addys in the network connection on my PC, but left the router settings alone.

As long as I have you, I was wondering something else. In my Win7 Network connections I have an entry for my hardware USB wifi adapter, but there is another entry for "Microsoft Virtual WiFi Miniport Adapter" that was added when I installed the USB wifi adapter. I disabled it in device manager since I didn't know what it was there for. Should I re-enable that for some reason? I haven't noticed any problems due to the disabling of it, but if it should be enabled and allowed then I would want to do so. Thanks!

It's needed for software access points, a new feature of windows 7.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library ... 85%29.aspx

Here's how to disable it correctly http://social.technet.microsoft.com/For ... c7913c14d/

wow that was quite a bit to digest

thanks ken, I don't see a reason for it in my network since I keep things basic, so I followed the directions in your link to disable it. Worked fine, and now the icon has disappeared from my network connections. I feel safer now

DNS from ISP is what i would always recommend to you. Think in the networking concern. There are a lot of hops that your data request would have to make if you select the open DNS's. ISP's DNS would help you better. You can contact your ISP to get a list of DNSs they use.

It turns out it didn't matter what DNS I used, the problem was with the crappy router not keeping connection with the modem. That headache is long gone now, I'm having no problems since going back to my trusty old WRT54GL (just missing the faster speeds of N). I'll be getting a new and different brand router soon, hopefully it will be a good one and won't mirror the problems of the last one.

Update to my old post (forgot I posted it). Apparently MIT got mildly DOS attacked so they pulled their DNS services from being public. Do not use 17.70.0.160 or 18.71.0.151 any longer. So yeah, stick with google or level 3 (4.2.2.2), or just your ISP's unless they suck and are slow/go down all the time (IE: Comcast).