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Paul Vixie Complains about Chromecast's Use of Google DNS

posted by martyb on Sunday February 17 2019, @09:12AM   Printer-friendly
from the pegging-the-bogosity-meter dept.

takyon writes:

'Google, this is bogus as hell' — one of the fathers of the internet blasts Google for how Chromecast behaves on his home network

"Google, this is bogus as hell," Paul Vixie ranted on Internet Engineering Task Force mail list this week. The IETF mail list is where the people who create the internet's technologies converse.

The post was noticed because Paul Vixie is an Internet Hall of Fame engineer known for his pioneering work on the modern Domain Name Service (DNS).

And it is how Google was using DNS in its Chromecast Ultra streaming device that ticked him off.

[...] [Vixie] bought a Google Chromecast. But when he went to set it up, he found it doing something no device in his network is allowed to do: It wouldn't use his own, private DNS server. It would only use Google's public server.

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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by zocalo on Sunday February 17 2019, @10:53PM (2 children)

    by zocalo (302) on Sunday February 17 2019, @10:53PM (#802640)
    You're reading that wrong. It's saying that DHCP does not *have* to push out a full set of IP configuration parameters (e.g. you could omit DNS and/or default gateway), supports additional options (such as those used for configuring additional parameter on some VoIP devices), and does not automatically update DNS zones with the new hostname/IP it's just sent to the client. It is absolutely expected that when a device is told to use a given DNS and/or gateway it will use it though because there's a very good chance that it simply won't work if it doesn't if the network adminstrators have egress filtering in place. Which is exactly what happened to Vixie's Chromecast until he faked out the 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 DNS resolvers.

    You can override that locally if you want (e.g. configure a static DNS and use DHCP for the IP), but any device that gets told to use a given DNS/gateway/whatever by DHCP and ignores of its own volition is broken.
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  • (Score: 2) by darkfeline on Sunday February 17 2019, @11:38PM

    by darkfeline (1030) on Sunday February 17 2019, @11:38PM (#802664) Homepage

    > It is absolutely expected that when a device is told to use a given DNS and/or gateway it will use it

    Funny, I don't read the RFC as saying "The client MUST respect any non-IP related configuration pushed via DHCP". All RFCs are carefully worded, and any requirements are explicitly stated with MUST. Just because you or anyone else personally expect it to happen does not mean the standard requires it.

    Also and again, you don't seem to understand. The gateway is a part of IP configuration. DNS is not. DNS is at the application level. This is equivalent to DHCP pushing a configuration saying whether clients should use a light or dark UI theme and the OS and individual applications deciding whether or not to respect that.

    Also and again, you failed to cite the exact RFC passage that states the client MUST use any DNS advertised via DHCP.

    Also and again, you're ignoring the fact that an application is not required to use the OS name resolution. Even if we assume incorrectly that the Chromecast OS MUST use the DNS server provided via DHCP, the Chromecast service running on that device is under no obligation to use the name resolution provided by the OS.

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  • (Score: 2) by Whoever on Monday February 18 2019, @04:25AM

    by Whoever (4524) on Monday February 18 2019, @04:25AM (#802763) Journal

    I think you will find that Windows has *never* fully used the DNS data that is in a DHCP reply. Windows only uses two resolvers, irrespective of how many the DHCP server to the client. I think there is other information in a dhcp reply that Windows ignores.