1 It is impossible to tell how Qube resolves without knowing exactly what code base is used. BIND resolves in parallel and sticks to those servers that answer. But it is not the only software package that was available in early 2000s to make gateway servers, and is one of the most resource-demanding. Alternatives may just poll down the list. In short, sorry, I don't know.

Residential Comcast delivers DNS information to forwarning nameservers at customer premises in DHCP. I set my gateway to ignore that information (because I set BIND to be a full-on recursive nameserver). But sometimes I save my configuration files and re-enable getting DNS addresses from Comcast temporarily, e.g. if I want to see their captive page, to register new modem. Because of that, I know that they change these addresses from time to time. Again the challenge is to know how to do this in Qube.

2

If by "Qube" you mean my Cobalt Qube, it's not involved. It's doing NAS, but it isn't involved in DNS. (It has the ability to act as one, but I've got that disabled.)

The question is what Windows does if the first two DNS's don't respond. Does that cost me time?

3 BTW, Comcast have a special page http://dns.comcast.net/

4

Awesome! That's just the information I need! My ping to DNS now is 11 milliseconds, not 140.