In a multi-core platform in which secondary processing cores do not have direct WAN connectivity, methods and apparatus are described that enable the secondary processing cores to provide DNS resolution services to their network applications and/or client devices attached thereto. In an exemplary embodiment, a primary processing core having direct WAN connectivity and a DHCP client includes a DNS proxy service module which acts as a DNS server to the platform's secondary processing cores. Each secondary processing core sends DNS queries to the primary core DNS proxy service module. A primary core DNS resolver regenerates DNS queries based on the DNS queries from the secondary cores and forwards them for resolution to WAN-side DNS servers whose IP addresses were provided to the DHCP client in response to an IP lease request. The resolved IP addresses are returned by the WAN-side DNS servers to the primary processing core, which provides them to the requesting secondary core applications or client devices, via the DNS proxy service module.