Se não me engano, é determinado pela ordem de vinculação da NIC nas Configurações avançadas na pasta de conexões de rede. Você pode verificar isso alterando a ordem de ligação das várias NICs e executando nslookup como um teste.
Para expandir minha resposta, citando o artigo que o Evan vinculou , aqui está um trecho do dito artigo:
The DNS Client service queries the DNS servers in the following order:
The DNS Client service sends the name query to the first DNS server on the preferred adapter’s list of DNS servers and waits one second for a response.
If the DNS Client service does not receive a response from the first DNS server within one second, it sends the name query to the first DNS servers on all adapters that are still under consideration and waits two seconds for a response.
If the DNS Client service does not receive a response from any DNS server within two seconds, the DNS Client service sends the query to all DNS servers on all adapters that are still under consideration and waits another two seconds for a response.
If the DNS Client service still does not receive a response from any DNS server, it sends the name query to all DNS servers on all adapters that are still under consideration and waits four seconds for a response.
If it the DNS Client service does not receive a response from any DNS server, the DNS client sends the query to all DNS servers on all adapters that are still under consideration and waits eight seconds for a response.
O adaptador preferido na etapa 1 é o adaptador listado primeiro na ordem de ligação.