Tagged “dns”
-
The Names That Only Exist on Your Own Network
Printers and shared drives answer to names no public resolver has heard of. Two things break them: a tunnel swallowing them, or them leaking out.
-
What Still Names the Sites You Visit: SNI Explained
Encrypted connections announce the hostname before encryption starts. That field is why private DNS alone does not hide your browsing.
-
Why Flushing the DNS Cache Fixes Odd VPN Behavior
Cached name lookups outlive a VPN connection change, so sites resolve to the wrong place. Clearing the cache is a real fix, not folklore.
-
What Your VPN's DNS Setting Actually Changes
VPN clients offer several DNS options and the labels are vague. Here is what each one does to where your name lookups go.
-
DNS over HTTPS vs a VPN: What Each One Hides
Encrypted DNS protects your name lookups only. A VPN protects the whole connection. They solve overlapping but different problems.
-
Who Runs Your DNS Resolver, and Why It Matters
Your resolver sees every hostname you look up. Knowing which one you use, and how it was chosen, is a basic privacy check.
-
How DNS Resolution Works, Step by Step
Turning a hostname into an IP address involves caches, a resolver, and a chain of authoritative servers. Each step is a place things can leak.
-
VPN vs Smart DNS: What Changing Only Your Resolver Can Do
Smart DNS changes which resolver answers you and encrypts nothing. That makes it the clearest illustration of what name resolution alone affects.
-
VPN vs Proxy: One Is an Application Setting, the Other Is a Route
A proxy is configured inside a program; a VPN edits your routing table. That single difference decides the scope and who resolves your names.
-
Where Your Browsing History Actually Lives
Your history exists in several places at once: the browser, a synced account, local caches, the resolver, and every site you visited. A tunnel touches one.
-
Split Tunnelling Gives You Two Paths Out of Your Device
Routing some traffic through the tunnel and some around it is useful and cheap. The cost is that you must know which path anything is on.
-
What a DNS Leak Is, and Where in the Chain It Happens
A DNS leak is a name lookup that left by the wrong door. Where in the resolution chain it escapes, and what the wrong resolver learns.
-
Using a VPN With a Smart TV: Covering a Device That Runs Nothing You Choose
Most smart TVs cannot run a VPN client at all, so coverage has to happen on the network — and the set may ignore the resolver you hand it anyway.
-
A VPN on Android: The Always-On Switch and the Private DNS Setting
Android puts the tunnel controls in the operating system: always-on, block-without-VPN, per-app coverage, and an encrypted DNS setting that can conflict.
-
A VPN on a Mac: What Happens to Name Resolution and Local Devices
On a Mac the tunnel is the easy part. One system resolver, a cache that outlives the change, and printers that vanish are the real subject.
-
A VPN on Windows 11: The Adapter, the Route, and the Resolver
Windows gives you a built-in client, a virtual adapter and an interface metric to inspect — plus a name-resolution habit that quietly undoes a tunnel.