DNS FIOS drop outs

[DimitriT]

Every 20-30 min DNS stops working for 10 seconds.

Router System Log is showing:

2021 Dec 28 14:24:21

dnsmasq

err

[SYS.3][SYS] bad address at /etc/hosts.dnsmasq-dns-lan0 line 9

2021 Dec 28 14:24:21

dnsmasq

err

[SYS.3][SYS] bad address at /etc/hosts.dnsmasq-dns-lan0 line 6

[dslr595148]

#1 While we get you have FIOS, do you also have FIOS TV?

#2 Note for this next question if you have one but in use, you must say so. Ex. Yes but a spare.

#3 Do you have your own separate RJ-45 WAN port NAT router?

#4 Do you have any spare computers that work that either has at least two NICs or you can add one? Note at least one of the NICs must be a wired NIC.

#5 Can you show us your host entries?

#6 If you do not know how to do that/where that info is, it would help to know the brand and model of your current NAT router.

[Cang_Household]

Have you changed the local domain on G3100?

Have you added any static DNS entries on your G3100?

You could screenshot those settings pages to us, but you may want to send them as private messages to protect your privacy.

[smith6612 · Accepted solution]

This tells me that DNSMasq is occasionally hitting an invalid entry when it tries to add a DNS Record for a device on your network, to the router's DNS Cache. It's probably crashing when applying the change and restarting. When devices join the network, they will register themselves in DNS with the router, so you can reach them easier from a file explorer or a web browser, if they expose any services.

I would check to see if you have any device which is joining the network at that time, and try to change it's hostname. In most cases, this is done by renaming the device. Anything with funny characters or blank spaces would be suspect at this point.

[dslr595148]

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@Smith6612 wrote:

This tells me that DNSMasq is occasionally hitting an invalid entry when it tries to add a DNS Record for a device on your network, to the router's DNS Cache. It's probably crashing when applying the change and restarting. When devices join the network, they will register themselves in DNS with the router, so you can reach them easier from a file explorer or a web browser, if they expose any services.

I would check to see if you have any device which is joining the network at that time, and try to change it's hostname. In most cases, this is done by renaming the device. Anything with funny characters or blank spaces would be suspect at this point.

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Please define funny characters to better help the users with this problem.

Please and thank you

[ammika13]

So, I am getting this exact problem. It keeps happening to me on a sunday at 4:30pm EST. It only happens when I add the moca 2.5 4 port ethernet hub that verizon sells. Every time I add it to the network everything works fine and then as soon as sunday 4:30 hits, my network completely restarts itself every 3 minutes until I disconnect the moca 2.5 ethernet hub thing. I thought maybe it was from the coax splitter I had going to fios mini and the moca box and that was cutting down on the signal so I dropped the mini connecting via coax and connected it via lan. Still, I am experiencing the same thing. Any help or ideas? I have a g3100 and an e3100 extender on my network, extender is connected via coax.

The errors my g3100 sends out is:

2022 Feb 13 17:09:17

dnsmasq

err

[SYS.3][SYS] bad address at /etc/hosts.dnsmasq-dns-lan0 line 9

2022 Feb 13 17:09:17

dnsmasq

err

[SYS.3][SYS] bad address at /etc/hosts.dnsmasq-dns-lan0 line 6

[smith6612]

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@dslr595148 wrote:

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Please define funny characters to better help the users with this problem.

Please and thank you

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Anything that is not alpha-numeric (0-9a-zA-Z). For example Unicode. As well as anything excluding a common character like _ or - or "." .

[Cang_Household]

That's weird. That MoCA 2.5 to 4 Ethernet is MEA, isn't it? That device is supposed to be largely a layer 2 device only and should not interfere with name resolution, which is a layer 7 application.

Besides the DNSmasq errors, do you see errors in other log sections? I believe the MEA also stores logs on them, but you would need advanced support to retrieve them.