DNS Forwarding

Created by Yuriy Andamasov, Modified on Thu, 11 Jan at 5:06 PM by Srividya Anantapatnaikuni

Article review date	2024-01-08
Validated for VyOS versions	1.2.5, 1.3.5, 1.4

Use DNS forwarding if you want your router to function as a DNS server for the local network. There are several options, the easiest being 'forward all traffic to the system DNS server(s)' (defined with set system name-server):

vyos@vyos-rtr# set service dns forwarding system

Manually setting DNS servers for forwarding:

vyos@vyos-rtr# set service dns forwarding name-server 8.8.8.8
vyos@vyos-rtr# set service dns forwarding name-server 8.8.4.4

Manually setting DNS servers with IPv6 connectivity:

vyos@vyos-rtr# set service dns forwarding name-server 2001:4860:4860::8888
vyos@vyos-rtr# set service dns forwarding name-server 2001:4860:4860::8844

Setting a forwarding DNS server for a specific domain:

vyos@vyos-rtr# set service dns forwarding domain example.com server 192.0.2.1

Example 1: router with two interfaces eth0 (WAN link) and eth1 (LAN, with IP address 192.168.0.1). A DNS server for the local domain (example.com) is at 192.0.2.1, other DNS requests are forwarded to Google's DNS servers.

vyos@vyos-rtr# set service dns forwarding domain example.com server 192.0.2.1
vyos@vyos-rtr# set service dns forwarding name-server 8.8.8.8
vyos@vyos-rtr# set service dns forwarding name-server 8.8.4.4
vyos@vyos-rtr# set service dns forwarding listen-address 192.168.0.1

Example 2: Same as example 1 but with additional IPv6 addresses for Google's public DNS servers:

vyos@vyos-rtr# set service dns forwarding domain example.com server 192.0.2.1
vyos@vyos-rtr# set service dns forwarding name-server 8.8.8.8
vyos@vyos-rtr# set service dns forwarding name-server 8.8.4.4
vyos@vyos-rtr# set service dns forwarding name-server 2001:4860:4860::8888
vyos@vyos-rtr# set service dns forwarding name-server 2001:4860:4860::8844
vyos@vyos-rtr# set service dns forwarding listen-address 192.168.0.1