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[MLGTWISTED]

What does DNS Relay do?  Does it cache certain information, not sure what the benifits are?

[lizzi555]

DNS Relay means in this case that all your machines send their DNS queries to the relay.

The relay sends the queries to the DNS server of the provider or whatever is set in the router's WAN settings.
When it receives the answer it sends it back to the machines and stores it for a short time.
So if another machine in your network searches for the same address, it will receive the answer directly from your router without asking internet servers again. (So there is a little memory which remembers the queries - so called: DNS cache)

Please don't ask how many addresses are stored and how long as D-Link nowhere published these values.

In practice you will not recognize any advantage in speed because it is only some milliseconds if everything with your connection is fine. As most machines have an own DNS cache this small advantage will only apply for the first request from a machine.

But you can use your router's address for DNS and need only this one address for all your machines.
You don't need to take care of changing DNS servers or IPs in the internet. Your router will recognize it and do the needed changes.

It is a much easier handling if you use devices with Reserved IP entries.

[MLGTWISTED]

Thanks for the feedback, great info, I have one more question - Does this effect pc's only or game systems like xbox, or is that totally different?

[lizzi555]

It is the same for all clients as the all use TCP/IP connections.
So if you entersd a static IP address in your X-Box menu, you also entered a gateway and DNS server.

Depending on the usage of DNS relay, you can either enter the IP of the router (DNS relay on) or you have to enter an IP address of an external DNS server (you'll find 2 valid addresses in the WAN status section of the router's menu).

They all behave the same.

[tombert]

I would like to know - does the relay also know the names of the computers from the internal network? - I mean those host-names which the DHCP server provided addresses to.
So it first should check my home host-names, if it doesn't find one then it should forward the request to the external DNS.

thx