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Running DNS locally for home network

Fresh7 days ago
Mar 15, 2026581401 views
Confidence Score1%
1%

Problem

I have a small home network that just got larger (new roommate, my existing roommate got a laptop (on top of her computer), my friends coming over with laptops, etc.). I'd like to run a local DNS server for lookups of my local network stuff ( , , , , ). I used to have a business line with a static IP, and run bind/named internally. However, now I have a normal account. My ISP's DNS servers are constantly changing (for whatever reasons my ISP doesn't like to keep the same IP range for long). I need my local DNS to be automatically updated to use my ISP's DNS for external traffic, but be able to maintain an internal DNS server (getting to update the hosts file is being a hassle with every new machine on top of rebuilding existing machines with win7 or Ubuntu 9.04). Additionally, My ISP's DNS servers often crash or become unresponsive. Are there any open DNS servers that are reliable (I don't want to reconfig every day) that I could use as my primary, then if those fail, then use my ISP'…

Error Output

fileserver.local

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1 Fix

Canonical Fix
Unverified Fix
New Fix – Awaiting Verification

Fix for: Running DNS locally for home network

Low Risk

Basically you need to run your own DHCP and DNS server. You're already running your own DHCP server if you have a typical router that gives out private IP addresses. Your DHCP server must be configured to hand out your router IP as the gateway address, and your DNS server IP as the DNS server address, obviously. Your DNS server must be configured to resolve a non-official top-level domain locally, such as , and then forward any other requests to another DNS. In BIND you need to add a section to…

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Environment