Testing Your Connection

After you have added your site to the DNSFilter dashboard, it is best practice to configure our DNS servers on one computer in order to test your policy settings and check for conflicts. After this test is successful, you can feel confident rolling out the change on your entire network.

Input the DNSFilter IPs listed below into your network adapter. You can make this change via the graphical user interface for your particular platform or using the commands below:

Windows Powershell

# Use below line for Wi-Fi adapter
Set-DnsClientServerAddress -InterfaceAlias Wi-Fi -ServerAddresses "103.247.36.36","103.247.37.37"

# Use below line for Ethernet adapter
Set-DnsClientServerAddress -InterfaceAlias Ethernet -ServerAddresses "103.247.36.36","103.247.37.37"

# Confirm change with
Get-NetIPConfiguration

Mac OSX Terminal

# Use below line for Wi-Fi adapter
networksetup -setdnsservers Wi-Fi 103.247.36.36 103.247.37.37

# Use below line for Ethernet adapter
networksetup -setdnsservers Ethernet 103.247.36.36 103.247.37.37

# Confirm change with
scutil --dns | grep nameserver

Chromebook

There is an article on changing to custom DNS on a Google Chromebook here: https://www.howtogeek.com/204672/how-to-change-the-dns-server-on-a-chromebook/

Linux Terminal

# Backup current resolv.conf
sudo cp /etc/resolv.conf /etc/resolv.conf.bak

# Set DNSFilter nameservers
echo -e "nameserver 103.247.36.36\nnameserver 103.247.37.37" | sudo tee /etc/resolv.conf

Testing in the Browser

Now that the DNS addresses have been set, you can perform a test of your filtering policy to make sure that everything is working correctly. We recommend that you try the following in your browser:

1. Verify your policy is active and filtering your desired categories by visiting debug.dnsfilter.com
2. Attempt to browse to a well-known domain that is allowed by your policy (i.e., google.com)
3. Attempt to visit a domain in your policy Block list

If everything is working as expected, you are now ready to deploy DNSFilter on your entire network. See our next article on Configuring Your Network for a walkthrough of common scenarios.

If you run into any issues, see our Site Troubleshooting section. The most common issue is to receive an error message like the one below. This indicates that DNSFilter does not recognize the IP address from which the DNS requests originate. Please ensure the IP address listed on the page is added to your site in the Dashboard. You may wish to visit whatismyip.com as well to verify.