On 06/18/2015 10:05 PM, Boylan, Ross wrote: This commit (which was included in libvirt 1.2.12) may help you to a solution: commit 298fa4858ced29e2c42681635a5a8dcd6da0b231 Author: Josh Stone <jistone(a)redhat.com&gt; Date: Wed Dec 3 16:01:33 2014 -0800 network: Let domains be restricted to local DNS This adds a new "localOnly" attribute on the domain element of the network xml. With this set to "yes", DNS requests under that domain will only be resolved by libvirt's dnsmasq, never forwarded upstream. This was how it worked before commit f69a6b987d616, and I found that functionality useful. For example, I have my host's NetworkManager dnsmasq configured to forward that domain to libvirt's dnsmasq, so I can easily resolve guest names from outside. But if libvirt's dnsmasq doesn't know a name and forwards it to the host, I'd get an endless forwarding loop. Now I can set localOnly="yes" to prevent the loop. So it sounds like the proper thing to do is to set the localOnly attribute and put the libvirt network in a subdomain, then point the dnsmasq on the host to the libvirt dns for that subdomain.