VPN Tunnel & DNS Question

[crice]

My friend is going to China soon, and I helped him set up an OpenVPN server on a DD-WRT router. I have a general question about the VPN tunnel and DNS.

As you may know, China's firewall blocks lots of things. I set up the VPN such that all traffic gets tunneled through the router, so he can access Facebook,etc.

HOWEVER I'm a noob and I do not know if DNS requests are also tunneled through the VPN. It would not make sense if he's in China, and he's trying to query an American (and blocked) DNS server.

Are DNS requests usually tunneled through the VPN?

 

[Tarrant64]

I don't know how DD-WRT does it but I know in some (if not all) VPN tunnels you can specify DNS information. If that doesn't work, you can actually manually specify a DNS server on the PC as well to point it wherever you want it to go. You should be alright - unless China has implemented a much more complicated network infrastructure and thought this workaround through.

I would expect things to be SLOW too.

EDIT: Also, unless you enable split-tunneling I think you shouldn't have a problem. Internet traffic will use the VPN tunnel unless that is enabled. I only use it to help alleviate internet traffic.