Issues with DNS resolution

Tanner Jacobsen

Hello! Fairly technical question here.

I have noticed that my DNS is forced to be set to 127.0.0.2. This makes sense, it's a loopback and it is handled locally and Covenant Eyes tells me that it is handled internally as 8.8.8.8 (Google). However, it appears the Covenant Eyes DNS either is unable to resolve Microsoft host names, or Windows sees the loopback and assumes I do not have a valid connection (if such a thing is possible). It feels as though it is not actually treating my DNS as the 8.8.8.8 it says it does.

I believe this because, only while using Covenant Eyes with the DNS set to 127.0.0.2, Windows states that my connection is offline while I am still able to use the internet mostly unimpeded excluding some desktop applications that appear to be dependent on Windows' determination of what my connection status is. For example, the desktop application for Spotify insists I am offline, whereas the web client works just fine. Again I only see this issue with the DNS set to the aforementioned loopback address.

Upon reviewing the event viewer within Windows I can see that a lot of Microsoft host names (and others such as Nvidia and Spotify's desktop client) are simply timing out and unable to resolve. In fact, it has failed to resolve addresses 57 times in the past 7 days. I tried going into an elevated command prompt and forcing a static DNS of 8.8.8.8 via netsh (network shell) and then flushing the DNS. This did not result in any tangible changes but ipconfig did say that my DNS had in fact changed to 8.8.8.8. I restarted Windows and it now states I was back online, and troublesome applications began to work.... for about 5 minutes. At which point Covenant Eyes returned my DNS to the previous static 127.0.0.2 and presumably flushed the DNS. I even tested having task scheduler run a batch file to change the DNS through network shell and flush it again on each user logon, and every 15 minutes thereafter just to see if it would work for a temporary fix. No luck there either.

 

I apologize for the wordy and technical nature of my problem but I was wondering if Covenant Eyes itself is having issues resolving Microsoft host names or if maybe I am perhaps looking for my problem in the wrong place. Any advice is much appreciated.

Thank you!

 

Comments

2 comments

Date Votes
  • Comment author
    Andy

    Hey Tanner! Thanks for reaching out. I apologize that you're having this issue on your computer. Ultimately, this is a Windows bug but the way that Covenant Eyes® utilizes DNS to enforce our filtering, sometimes this bug can be exacerbated. To clarify, our Windows client does not use Google for DNS resolution. It would forward DNS lookups of non blocked domains to what the network adapter had set for DNS before we put in our loop back address. It still stands to reason Covenant Eyes®  might be causing an issue with those Microsoft domains and if you're willing, we could possibly grab some debug logs from your device and look into it further? In the meantime, restarting the device sometimes helps or you could consider removing our filter if it's causing a lot of headache.

    Andy R

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  • Comment author
    Derek Nelson
    • Edited

    For anyone who needs help solving this in the future, one temporary "fix" is to reset your network adapter within the Win10 OS:

    1. Open Windows Start Menu, type ncpa.cpl, and open that Network Connections app
    2. Right-click your network adapter you use to connect to the internet
    3. Choose DISABLE
    4. Wait about 5 seconds (but sometimes could take longer if your computer is really derpy that day)
    5. Then right-click it again
    6. Choose ENABLE

    If step 4 is too ambiguous, then you'll be happy to hear about the following solution (as a sort of step 0, if you will):

    1. Open Windows Start Menu, type cmd.exe, and open the Windows Command Prompt app
    2. Type the following line of code (followed by keying Enter to execute the command):
    ping -t 8.8.8.8

     This command religiously pings Google's main server roughly every second and will do so until Jesus returns (or the command prompt is halted by others means). If you are online (aka you can communicate with Google) the Command Prompt will notate this fact with a "Reply from..." and the time it took for the message to return. If you aren't online (aka your adapter has finally been disabled) there will be some kind of message about a failure to communicate.

    There are methods you could employ to automate this whole process. One such way would be to reset the network adapter via commandline in a Windows BATCH script. My chosen implementation is to run an AutoHotKey script that does it all:

    1. It monitors my adapter's internet connection
    2. Then calls the commandline to disable the adapter
    3. Then waits for my internet to die
    4. Then calls the commandline to enable the adapter again
    5. Then waits for internet again
    6. If it waits too long I get a warning that something broke

    Cheers!

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