NetGear MR814v2 DNS Query REFUSED errors

I've been having the same problem:

I'm also using an MR814v2, and Comcast is my ISP. I've had no problems until yesterday (4/19/06). I'm using the latest firmware, and I made no changes in settings within at least a month before the problem began. When it persisted for over 24 hours I began tinkering, eventually resetting it to factory settings, which didn't help. The problem occurs with a wired or a wireless connection, and on all computers in the house.

Using a static DNS on my computer, the problem goes away. (But using a static DNS is impractical on a laptop that I use on other networks.) If I let the router assign the DNS through DHCP, queries take 3-8 seconds and often time out. A webpage with ads from several domains can take over a minute to load.

The router assigns itself as the DNS router, rather than forwarding the addresses from the ISP. Providing the router with static addresses for DNS, as opposed to retrieving them from the ISP, has no effect.

It is suspicious that two of us, each using Comcast, had the same problem occur suddenly in the same week. More so when Comcast just sent out a letter in my area with instructions to insure that customers' DNS's were set dynamically, in preparation for a server upgrade. (That's why I waited 24 hours before giving it more than a grumble -- I thought they were getting the bugs out. Comcast support pleads ignorance, and naturally won't support a third party router.)

Both DNS addresses provided seem to work correctly and quickly when not proxied by the router. Could the DNS upgrade conflict with this particular router, or with DNS proxies in general?

I did as you did and set up my systems to statically assign comcast's DNS servers, but like you say, this is just asking for heartache further down the line (at least I have internet access for the near term). Comcast support did the same to me, as soon as I had to admit that when I bypassed the router my DNS queries resolved OK they had their opportunity to drop out of the loop and grabbed it.

I was hoping somebody else with Comcast would respond. Otherwise I was assuming my router just went flakey and was going to replace it.

I wonder if there is something different about the DNS responses coming back from Comcast that has triggered some bug or incompatibility in the router's DNS code. Maybe it could be fixed in a firmware update if we could get somebody at NetGear to look at it. It would be an awfully strange coincidence that our same model router fails in the same manner at the same time using the same ISP that is making changes in the problem area.

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I just set up a cheap Hawking wireless router on Comcast, and DNS is working perfectly. If there were some general Comcast problem, then I think you'd see a *lot* more flaming here.

I don't think it's a general Comcast issue since you're right, there would be blood in the streets by now if it were. Also the fact that bypassing the router allows DNS to work fine for other clients seems to indicate that it is not a general DNS problem. I *do* suspect that something about their DNS has changed and that most DNS clients handle it just perfectly but that something specific to the MR814v2 is causing hiccups. This is something that probably needs to be driven by NetGear, and I'm thinking there is probably not alot of motivation to do so given that this is an older product.

This worked for me:

According to the router documentation, specifying a primary and secondary DNS in "Basic Settings" should cause the router to pass the specified servers rather than its own address as the DNS via DHCP. This does not appear to be the case. But, when I said that using a static address on the router didn't help, I may have been too hasty. I saw that the DNS provided to my laptop was still the router's address, and, since I had assumed the problem to be associated with this behavior, I moved on. (Actually, I thought I'd tried testing the network, but I guess I not.) Later, when I came across this behavior in the manual, I tried it again. Still, the router provides itself as the DNS, but the problem reliably dissappears when I do this, and reappears when I switch back to DHCP.

Static addresses on the router aren't ideal, but they're nowhere near the inconvenience of setting statics on each computer. I'm using the Comcast addresses that had been provided dynamically, found on the "Router Status" page. DNS is responsive and reliable.

Does this work for you?

BTW, for anyone else who finds this thread, I've been using the following two commands in succession to test DNS performance under XP:

ipconfig /flushdns ping

If it is purely a DNS problem, the ping times will be fine when they're successful, but there'll be a lag after entering the command and before a line that looks something like this:

Pinging

[66.102.7.99] with 32 bytes of data:

And, if the lag is severe enough, the ping will fail altogether.

In case someone has this problem and stumbles onto this page, but doesn't know what DNS is or how to configure their router, here are the overly explicit instructions for what fixed it for me.

I found that I didn't have to set static DNS addresses on my computer itself, that setting them on the router does the trick. My solution was this:

1) Confirm that it is a DNS problem. DNS is the system by which your computer looks up an url (eg "") finds its address (eg "66.102.7.147").

To test DNS, open a command prompt, flush any cached DNS information, and ping a server. Use the following two commands:

ipconfig /flushdns ping

Repeat this pair of commands a couple of times. If it is purely a DNS problem, the ping times will be fine when they're successful, but there'll be a lag after entering the command and before a line that looks something like this:

Pinging

[66.102.7.147] with 32 bytes of data:

And, if the lag is severe enough, the ping will fail altogether. If a line with the url's address pops up right away, you don't have a DNS problem.

Assuming you have a DNS problem, the rest of these instructions tell you how to set fixed addresses for your router to use for DNS, rather than having them automatically assigned by your ISP when you connect. You'll probably be using the same addresses that you'd normally be assigned, but this gets past the DNS lag bug that seems to come from using this particular router with Comcast. At least it did for me.

2) Browse to your router's configuration system. In your browser, go to the address 192.168.0.1 You should be asked for a name and password. If that doesn't work, type:

ipconfig

at your command prompt, and look for the address of the "Default Gateway". Enter that address in your browser. Now you really should be asked for a name and password. Unless you've changed them, the defaults are "admin" and "password".

3) Get your DNS addresses. Here you can add whatever DNS addresses you'd like, but you might as well use the ones Comcast gives you. Find them on the "Router Status" page. Either use the link, or go to:

your-router's-address-from-step-2/s_status.htm

Under the "Internet Port" section they're the addresses labeled as "Domain Name Server." These are the ones I got, and I'm sure they'd work for you too:

68.87.69.146 68.87.85.98

4) Give your router static addresses. Click on the "Basic Settings" link, or browse to:

your-router's-address-from-step-2/start.htm

In the DNS section, change from "Get Automatically..." to "Use These...". Enter the addresses you got from step 3 as the primary and secondary DNS.

Click on the "Apply Button"

5) Test it. Run that pair of commands from step one four or five times. If you're still having problems, reload the "Basic Settings" screen and check that it really is set on "Use These...", and that the addresses entered are correct. If everything looks ok, try power cycling the router (unplug it, wait a minute, plug it back in) and testing again.

That's it. This worked for me - please post back as to whether it did for you.

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Not necessarily, and a bad idea in general -- those are specific to your particular area.