Configuring IE to resolve DNS at the proxy rather than locally

Question

With the intention of tunneling web traffic through an SSH connection, the following has been done:

I've manually configured a PAC file in IE7 in the LAN Settings dialog. I've verified that traffic is routed through my SSH tunnel that is setup for SOCKS5 dynamic port forwarding. I see that IE7 is always trying to resolve the name locally first.

What I'm looking for is the ability to have the DNS name resolved at the proxy, rather than locally by the browser.

There's a setting in Firefox that specifies DNS remote resolution, and Safari does it automatically. I've verified correct operation for these 2 other browsers. It would be nice if I could get IE to work also.

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This is for reference so you could understand where does the question originate from.

Notice: The question was actually found by the help of google but with no answers available. Considering how it is exactly my question I figured I should just copy/paste over here because I don't think I could describe any better (there is a small introduction though).

Answer 1

Do you know if this happens in IE6?

You'd have to ask Microsoft about this behavior, and if it is intended. I tried looking around there site.

The best guess is that they used to support SOCKS4, then they added SOCKS5, but did not think about how to re-factor the other network behaviors to leverage the protocol features.

When SOCKS5 was implemented in Mozilla, we had a lot of discussion about it. Some people wanted it to be one way (local DNS), others wanted it another way (server-side DNS). I had my preference, but since I had supported Netscape Proxy Server before, I realized that there would be people in both configurations. Adding the option was probably the right choice...

Answer 2

Disabling client-Side DNS caching may be one option, although this would cause all DNS resolution to take place remotely. This basically involves disabling the DNS Client service and flushing the local DNS resolver cache.

Instead of checking the local DNS resolver cache first, all DNS resolution would immediately be performed remotely at the proxy DNS servers specified in your TCP/IP settings for the active network connection.