Most VPN services that you can pay for will be configured to redirect all of your IP traffic through the VPN tunnel. (This often changes only a few options, making the vpn appear to be functional.) Another common mistake is to run your vpn client without administrator or root privileges. You may or may not be assigned a dns server through a vpn based on a) which vpn implementation you are using b) which OS you are using or c) whether or not the server AND client vpn settings allow this. * If you are using linux, most VPN implementations won't assign a dns server even if the VPN server is configured for it. If you do this before and after connecting to a vpn and the dns server listed doesn't change, than your DNS isn't being assigned by your VPN. Similarly, if you are using ubuntu you can use 'nmcli dev list iface eth0 | grep IP4' ** *. On windows and you can tell if your DNS is being handed out by your VPN by opening up a cli and typing in 'nslookup localhost' and looking at the top. **Before I get too into the specifics, I'll just say this. What it sort of boils down to are two things: one is that a vpn tunnel doesn't need to redirect all your traffic and the other is that a VPN server doesn't have to assign a dns server. This is probably the most secure way since all internal traffic is sure to stay in the VPN.Īh, I know that this has been pretty much answered, but I wanted to bring a bit more clarification to the answers here as, in the end, the true answer is completely dependent on how both the server and client are configured. In this case, when you are on the VPN all DNS would use the VPN's DNS.

A final option is that you might operate your VPN in Tunnel Mode, sending all communications (including Internet) through the VPN stack.If you send traffic out both stacks at once this would be 'Split Mode'. Your OS must support this, as must the VPN service.

If your VPN does assign a new DNS - for example by using DHCP option 6 'DNS Server' - then you can have different DNS servers for the VPN and for Internet.

This can present a problem if the external DNS cannot resolve internal addresses (or as you indicate, if you don't want internal addresses to be known externally).

If your VPN does not assign a new DNS for the VPN session then you will continue to use the DNS server(s) configured in your main Internet IP Stack.

VPN's are (typically) like an additional IP stack on your system, and can have a separate DNS server address configured. Depending on how your VPN is configured, you might or might not use the same DNS for your VPN and for Internet.

Open a vpn on a mac