Verizon Actiontec Router and Local DNS

I have been really busy and not posting much, but I have my home lab pretty much built out and have a bunch of new projects in the hopper, more on that in future posts.  If you have FIOS like I do you probably have a Actiontec router provided by Verizon.  When building out my home lab I wanted to use my Actiontec router as my DNS server, for obvious reasons, the web interface became frustrating pretty quickly.  So many clicks and the ability to only enter a single host registration at a time:

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The ability to edit DNS from telnet is actually really nice on the Action tech router.  Commands are petty simple.

1) Enable Telnet on the router (Advanced –> Local Administration)

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2) Once telnet is enabled, you can now telnet to your router using the same credentials used with the web interface.

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3) After the telnet session is established there are basically three commands you need to be familiar with:

  • dns_get:  lists all DNS server entries
  • dns_set:  adds a DNS entry
  • dns_del:  deletes a dns entry

The syntax is pretty simple:

  • dns_get:  used by itself to list all DNS entries
  • dns_set: dns_set ID HOSTNAME IP_ADDRESS (e.g. – dns_set 1 host1 192.168.1.100)
  • dns_del:  dns_del ID (e.g. – dns_del 1)

This method of adding and removing DNS entries from the Actiontec router is significantly faster than using the web interface.

I use a Google Doc spreadsheet to track my IPs and build the command to add and remove DNS entries.  I have shared my template here:  https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Alfr2Qqx-moWdE43YTFZLVRtRWM1X3VsdXY2UmFBVUE