How to overcome BT's forced DNS servers

We had a new BT Business Broadband ADSL line installed at work today with a static IP address, and are using a Draytek Vigor 2860 router.

Before the ADSL line is established (after a router reboot, say), in
Online Status -> Physical Connection -> LAN Status -> Router Primary DNS and Router Secondary DNS
shows correctly the DNS router addresses I had assigned, namely the Google DNS servers 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4

As soon as the ADSL line connection is established, some 10-20 second later, these addresses are changed to what I presume are BT DNS servers (the IP addresses vary after each reboot).

Has anyone met this? And do you know how to prevent BT's 'forced' DNS routers overriding the ones we specify, for the Draytek 2860 specifically?

TIA!

I set my own DHCP Server up which gives out Internal IP Addresses to all connecting devices, it also gives out DNS Addresses too.

Not too sure what OS you are using, but on windows you can also change the DNS Server(s) in the network setting.

Paul

There is no way that BT can "force" a router to use its DNS addresses (or at least, not third party routers). It's all down to the router's firmware what it does. According to the user manual the Draytek 2860 will default to getting the DNS address from the ISP. However, there appears to be an option to override that. It's covered in page 146 onwards:-

http://www.draytek.co.uk/download/support/userguides...

Thank you! That looks very promising.

Do you refer specifically to the option at the bottom of page 148:

Force router to use “DNS server IP address …..”

Force Vigor router to use DNS servers configured in LAN1/LAN2/LAN3/LAN4/LAN5/LAN6 instead of DNS servers given by the Internet Access server (PPPoE, PPTP, L2TP or DHCP server).

Unless BT hijacks port 53

Yes

What I said was "There is no way that BT can "force" a router to use its DNS addresses".

Hijacking port 53 isn't forcing the router to do it. The subject was specifically about router configurations.

The effect is the same though, isn't it?

I've always used Google for DNS and it's never been switched but I have also only done it on my actual machines and never at the router.

The HH6 has the option for Custom DNS so I hope that BT have moved away from it - for now I just use Google's IPv6 DNS instead, but again on all my machines only.

In reply to a post by BatBoy:

Unless BT hijacks port 53

They don't.

Edited by troublegum (Thu 15-Dec-16 17:34:30)