why do all bad hostnames resolve to 198.105.254.23?

Question

I'm running 14.04 on a desktop and laptop connected to a DSL router and am unable to get any of the internal hostnames to resolve correctly. When I dig desktopname:

; <<>> DiG 9.9.5-3-Ubuntu <<>> desktopname
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 39208
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 2, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;desktopname.           IN  A

;; ANSWER SECTION:
desktopname.        10  IN  A   198.105.254.23
desktopname.        10  IN  A   198.105.244.23

;; Query time: 64 msec
;; SERVER: 192.168.0.1#53(192.168.0.1)
;; WHEN: Fri Oct 17 20:18:11 PDT 2014
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 61

cat /etc/network/interfaces

auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

Your ISP is probably serving a domain-not-found page. E.g: http://askubuntu.com/q/49817/158442 — muru, Oct 18 '14 at 03:28
Change your DNS provider as described in the answers to “What is the proper way to change the DNS IP?”. You may be able to change the DNS server entry in your router to affect everyone in your LAN. — David Foerster, Oct 18 '14 at 04:15

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Apr 01 '19 at 03:22

This is your ISP (in this case, Centurylink) trying to be helpful and resolve all unresolvable domains to a "helper" page that shows you a list of search results

According to their "Why am I here link?":

The CenturyLink Web Helper service provides helpful search results to our customers when they would otherwise encounter web address errors. You are seeing search results offered by the CenturyLink Web Helper service because you clicked on an invalid link or entered an invalid Web address into the address bar of your browser. Misspellings and typing errors frequently cause these errors. In instances where the site you were looking for is clear, you may not see this page at all. Instead, the service may take you directly to the site.

why do all bad hostnames resolve to 198.105.254.23?

1 Answers1