I have slackware 10.1 machine connected to a DLink router. The IP address of the router is 192.168.0.1, and the IP address of the linux box is 192.168.0.100 (assigned by router's DHCP server).

I found that I couldn't ping a host name, eg,

ping linuxquestions.org

would return "unknown host" unless I put in a line for a dns server in the resolv.conf file, eg,

nameserver 204.127.198.4

This makes sense to me, but by accident I tried this single line in the resolv.conf file:

nameserver 192.168.0.1

And this also worked! So my question is this: why does this work? I have extensively searched for references to just settting the nameserver address the same as the default gateway, but found nothing. Seems likes this is a lot easier than finding and entering dns server IP addresses.

Any comments?

while setting up my home network, I install on my server NAT and dnsmasq, that is a dns request forwarder. I do suppose that your router does something similar to nat and also rerout your dns request to an external dns server.

I also use the ip address of my nat server as dns even it it is not a dns server, because of dnsmasq

reup

the answer is very simple. your router has a dns server inside. most routers do. the router itself uses the dns server of your ISP. I guess you configured that yourself, or the address was retreived with a DHCP request.

Yes of course. Thank you!