I am currently using Windows 10. Does Windows automatically flush DNS records in the cache or do I have to do it manually?
Thanks,
BaconErie
Cache entries will naturally expire at the end of the TTL (time to live), so you should not have to do anything in any OS or browser to make this happen.
What specifically are you trying to accomplish?
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Ok, thanks for the reply.
I am trying to create a Website Blocker with Pi-Hole that can be enabled/disabled at anytime, and so I would like to know if I need to manually run ipconfig /flushdns on my device or would Windows automatically clear DNS entries.
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Pi-hole supports this out of the box.
However, you are correct to consider client-side caching.
While Pi-hole will stop filtering any incoming DNS requests the moment you disable it via its web UI, your clients will continue to use the IP addresses they've learned until associated cached TTLs expire.
While domains that were blocked will be unblocked pretty quickly (as Pi-hole sets a low TTL for blocked entries), the same is not true for allowed domains where the true, domain owner supplied TTL is respected, i.e once you re-enable Pi-hole - depending on such a TTL- it may take a considerable amount of time before caching clients request DNS resolution again for a domain that should be blocked (that is one of the main reasons why employing DNS for time-based (parental) controls may not produce expected results).
In that latter case, flushing the client-side DNS cache could be beneficial, in order to put Pi-hole's filtering in effect again well before a client-cached official TTL would expire.
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