4.15.3 Name resolution when using a proxy

If you are using a proxy to access a private network, it can make a difference whether DNS name resolution is performed by PuTTY itself (on the client machine) or performed by the proxy.

The ‘Do DNS name lookup at proxy end’ configuration option allows you to control this. If you set it to ‘No’, PuTTY will always do its own DNS, and will always pass an IP address to the proxy. If you set it to ‘Yes’, PuTTY will always pass host names straight to the proxy without trying to look them up first.

If you set this option to ‘Auto’ (the default), PuTTY will do something it considers appropriate for each type of proxy. Telnet, HTTP, and SOCKS5 proxies will have host names passed straight to them; SOCKS4 proxies will not.

Note that if you are doing DNS at the proxy, you should make sure that your proxy exclusion settings (see section 4.15.2) do not depend on knowing the IP address of a host. If the name is passed on to the proxy without PuTTY looking it up, it will never know the IP address and cannot check it against your list.

The original SOCKS 4 protocol does not support proxy-side DNS. There is a protocol extension (SOCKS 4A) which does support it, but not all SOCKS 4 servers provide this extension. If you enable proxy DNS and your SOCKS 4 server cannot deal with it, this might be why.