In my PC I am using Google Public DNS as my DNS servers. In Internet protocol (TCP/IP) properties I have set Preferred DNS server to 8.8.4.4 and Alternate DNS server to 8.8.8.8.
According to me this DNS server should be used to resolve any request to website to its IP by using this DNS servers (see Google DNS and How Domain Name Servers Work).
But when I checked trace route to a website in my PC I got the following output:
Tracing route to www.google.com [74.125.236.80] over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.1.201
2 360 ms 349 ms 292 ms 122.178.216.1
3 145 ms 107 ms 148 ms 122.166.32.121
4 32 ms 53 ms 120 ms 122.166.32.9
5 45 ms 42 ms 121 ms 122.175.255.29
6 63 ms 76 ms 51 ms 182.79.255.45
7 52 ms 134 ms 61 ms 72.14.194.22
8 86 ms 59 ms 72 ms 72.14.232.202
9 106 ms 107 ms 60 ms 66.249.94.39
10 101 ms 103 ms 117 ms 209.85.249.235
11 148 ms 224 ms 276 ms 74.125.236.80 Trace complete.
When I checked all these IPs in who.is I found that they belong to my ISP. So my question is where is Google Public DNS used? Also how come my ISP's nameserver is used even if I set Google Public DNS as the DNS server in my PC? Or are my settings wrong?
Best Answer
You don't see the DNS request in traceroute. To see which DNS server is used, try nslookup:
Or:
The Name and Address (or SERVER) part is your DNS server. Traceroute gives you the route from your IP to google, which of course will go through your ISP.