DNS reported by WHOISMYDNS is different to DNS showing in Hub 2 router settings

[#1]

Hi,

As a newbie and not very technical I am not sure it I have the correct section of the Forum.

I used to check my router was OK and not been "hacked" by using the F SECURE ROUTER CHECKER online tool. It usually reported green box everything as OK.      Currently the online tool is undergoing a site refresh.

Just last week the online tool reported as yellow "Details assumed to be fine but it could not complete the test. I looked at WHOISMYDNS.com which reported that the DNS being accessed was 81.134.97.163 and not the plusnet primary one. This DNS appears to be hosted by BT telecommunications. Each time I have checked the last 5 numbers have varied but all from the BT range. 

I have factory reset the router but the same 81.134........DNS set appears. I am not getting any odd redirects etc.

Can anybody advise please.

Thanks

[#2]

First I would question the dependability of this as a test tool.

"When you click the Check my DNS button, we search the DNS server logs for your unique request and find the IP address of the server that made the request on your behalf."

We as users do not know what the IP addresses of the actual DNS server making a look up request.

"The Plusnet primary one" as you call it (the published IP addresses) are virtual IP / load balancer IP addresses, not actual DNS server addresses.  The DNS server address dealing with the request, could be one of many.  

[#3]

Hi Townman,

Thanks for your reply which I think I understand but it clears up in my mind how the process works 'probably' and that it is working as intended.

[#4 · Accepted solution]

Hi @Dave447 

Welcome to the forum.

We've recently made some upgrades on the DNS platform, as @Townman says the IP addresses in your router are anycast IP addresses in that the we can assign the same DNS IP addresses to each customer and you can hit completely different DNS servers at the other end, this allows us to easy add new servers or take a server out for maintenance or if a server breaks there's plenty more servers that can take over all seamlessly.

Each server behind the scenes has a unique real IP address as well as the anycast IPs, it's that IP address that is used when the DNS servers need to lookup an IP it hasn't got cached and that's the IP you're seeing on this test, or one of several as there are a number of servers and they all have IP addresses from a BT range of IPs.