11-12-2021, 10:35 AM
Picture this: I'm chilling after dinner, firing up the VPN to check some server logs. Everything connects fine, but then bam, websites inside the network won't load by name. I try pinging IPs directly, and those work, but domains? Nada. Turns out my router was pushing the wrong DNS forwarders through the tunnel. Spent an hour poking around, restarting services, feeling like a dummy.
But here's the fix that usually sorts it. First, hop into your VPN client settings and eyeball the DNS options there. Make sure it's set to use the server's DNS, not your home ISP's. If that's good, fire up command prompt on your machine. Type ipconfig /flushdns and hit enter. That clears out the stale cache junk.
Sometimes it's the server side acting up. Log into your Windows Server remotely if you can. Head to the DNS manager tool. Restart the DNS service from there. Or check if your VPN gateway is configured to push the right DNS suffix. You might need to tweak the DHCP scopes to include the domain search list.
Hmmm, another sneaky one: firewall rules blocking UDP port 53. Peek at those inbound rules on the server. Loosen 'em if they're too tight for internal traffic. And don't forget to reboot the client machine after changes. That often seals the deal.
Or if it's a split-tunnel setup, force all traffic through the VPN by disabling split in the config. Test with nslookup from command line to see what server it's querying. Adjust the preferred DNS in network adapter properties if needed.
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