Why can Chrome resolve some URLs that cause Safari and Firefox to choke?

[Buadhai]

This on both an M1 iMac running Ventura and an M2 MBA running Sonoma.

My wife asked me for help in getting to the following website:

https://cios.coj.go.th (Thailand court system - she's an attorney)

Neither Safari nor Firefox can resolve this URL, but Chrome connects immediately.

I had thought that browsers would always use whatever DNS server you set up in Network settings, but that seems not to be the case.

dig on the MBA yields the following mess:

Fifteen:~ mnewman$ dig cios.coj.go.th

; <<>> DiG 9.10.6 <<>> cios.coj.go.th
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: SERVFAIL, id: 49469
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 1

;; OPT PSEUDOSECTION:
; EDNS: version: 0, flags:; udp: 512
; OPT=15: 00 0a 46 6f 72 20 63 69 6f 73 2e 63 6f 6a 2e 67 6f 2e 74 68 2f 61 ("..For cios.coj.go.th/a")
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;cios.coj.go.th.            IN    A

;; Query time: 134 msec
;; SERVER: 8.8.8.8#53(8.8.8.8)
;; WHEN: Fri Jan 05 15:38:27 +07 2024
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 69

Both of these machines are set up to use 8.8.8.8 and 1.1.1.1 as DNS servers. This has worked fine for years and still works for every URL I've tried, except for the court website.

If I use the ISP's DNS server it works:

;; ANSWER SECTION:
cios.coj.go.th.        784    IN    A    61.19.239.200

Can someone help me understand what's going on here? Specifically:

• Why can't Google and CloudFlare's DNS servers resolved the court URL but can resolve other URLs?

• What magic does Chrome have that enables it to resolve the court URL?

 

[bogdanw]

Poorly configured server. See
https://www.whatsmydns.net/#A/cios.coj.go.th
https://viewdns.info/dnsreport/?domain=cios.coj.go.th
https://intodns.com/cios.coj.go.th

Chrome might have Secure DNS turned on https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/10468685

I get:
nslookup cios.coj.go.th 8.8.8.8 Server: 8.8.8.8 Address: 8.8.8.8#53 ** server can't find cios.coj.go.th: SERVFAIL nslookup cios.coj.go.th 1.1.1.1 Server: 1.1.1.1 Address: 1.1.1.1#53 ** server can't find cios.coj.go.th: SERVFAIL

 

[Buadhai]

Good and thanks. You’re thinking that both the Google and CloudFlare servers are misconfigured and that Chrome's secure DNS gets around this by using a different server.

Seems likely. Thanks again.

 

[smirking]

I've had issues like this too, but it's only Safari that's affected. It's not a frequent occurrence and the most common culprit are sponsored ads that appear in my Google search results. This has always perplexed me, but I've never felt compelled to troubleshoot it since I just open a different browser and it's fine.