Options dialog - DNS - Non-existing Domains

• Redirect requests for non-existing domain names

  • Requests for A-records (IPv4)
    Enter the IP address to redirect to.

  • Requests for AAAA-records (IPv6)
    Enter the IP address to redirect to.

  • Additional TXT-record explaining synthesized response
    Enter a short text explaining why the client is being redirected.
    This will be visible when someone uses diagnostics tools such as NSLOOKUP, DIG, and other DNS lookup tools.

  • Exceptions...
    Click this button to specify the following exceptions:

    • Only redirect domain names starting with 'www'
      Limit redirection to typical web-site domain names.

    • Do not redirect domain names that belong to local zones (authoritative)
      Limit redirection to domain names other than your own.

    • Do not redirect domain names that begin with an IPv4 address (reverse and RBL/DNSBL record names)
      When checked, domain names where the first 4 name segments resemble an IPv4 address will not be redirected.
      WARNING: If your e-mail server or spam filter programs are using one or more RBL/DNSBL lists, redirecting non-existing domain names representing RBL/DNSBL records could cause e-mails from valid senders to be rejected. We therefore recommend enabling this exception (default).

    • Do not redirect these domain names and their sub-names
      Limit redirection to domain names other than these.

    • Do not redirect queries from the following IP addresses
      Limit redirection to queries from other IP addresses than these.

How to use this:

Typically when you enter a non-existing domain name in a web-browser, you either get an error page, or you are redirected to some search web-site controlled by the web-browser company or possibly your ISP.

This of course happens all the time because of misspellings and bad links on web-sites.

Now you can take advantage of those failed requests (from any client configured to use your DNS server) by redirecting them to your web-server instead of giving this traffic to the browser companies.

This option redirects all recursive DNS requests for non-existing domain names to a server IP address which you control.

This gives you a unique opportunity to present your own custom search page, a domain sale offer, a marketing message, an intranet site, or anything else you can think of.