Linksys router/Tomato firmware DNS issues

Question

I've got a WRT54GS that I've loaded the current version of Tomato onto. I entered static DHCP addresses in for the devices on my network, released and renewed the address on my desktop and tried to ping another computer. All I got was The request could not find host blah. Please check the name and try again. Now, I verified that my desktop and the target machine I'm trying to ping have both received their proper static DHCP lease and that their DNS server is the IP address of my router. What am I missing?

Solution

I would start by making sure that the settings are the same on every computer (have to rule it out)... then on each machine, right click on the network interface settings and do properties, double click on IPv4, then advanced.

From here, I would click on the DNS tab and manualy add the server in the top list then select the option "Append these DNS suffixes (in order):" and choose something such as .local or .mynetwork then tick the bottom two options.

Restart all machines after making these changes and go to the command prompt and type ipconfig /renew followed by ipconfig /registerdns

Next, at the command prompt, type "Nslookup" and just try the name of one or two machines and see what happens.

If you are still getting no where, check DNS settings on the router, it sounds like it is not allowing other machines to register / is a caching DNS server for the internet ONLY, if it does work - cool.

If this doesn't help, you may be best off just using hosts files or using a different firmware - but, hopefully it has helped.

Edit - Also, Just thought - Remember to check that ICMP Echo is allowed on the Windows Firewall!

Comments

[Admin]

Are the machines firewalled?

[Admin]

Good question. I'll have to check.

[Admin]

So, the machines are firewalled with Windows Firewall, but it's kind of intermittent. Some of the time the machines can ping each other by host name, other times not. Interestingly, my Macbook has absolutely no trouble with host names on the network. Any new ideas?

[Admin]

probably you should reformulate your question, because I believe it's windows issue, not router/DNS

[Admin]

What exactly are you trying to accomplish?

[Admin]

I'm trying to be able to access other machines on the network without having to refer to my Excel file of IP mappings all the time. For example, being able to put the host name into the Remote Desktop connection box instead of opening Excel, locating the IP address, copying it and pasting into Remote Desktop.

[quack quixote]

no, this is a perfectly sane way to configure it. the router acts as a caching DNS for the LAN.

[Hasaan Chop]

I don't see anything particularly sane about expecting router firmware to replace BIND, but to each his own.

[quack quixote]

dnsmasq isn't exactly a BIND replacement... but then if your home/SOHO network needs BIND, you're already running your own in-house DNS.

[jasonh]

Thanks, but they're all in the same workgroup. I used to run a domain and everything worked perfectly then, but not now.

[quack quixote]

sounds like this is already configured (he mentions the router's IP as DHCP-assigned DNS server) ... tho it's good to double-check.

[jasonh]

The nslookup is what did it. Windows reported that the DNS server (my Tomato router) did not know the hostname for one of the Static DHCP entries I put in. So I did a bit of Googling and found out that you have to assign a domain name to the router and as soon as I did that, I can now ping by host name! Thanks!

[Geoff]

@jasonh - your comment solved my DHCP problem also; as soon as I added the domain name everything fell into place. It seems to me that it would be good to have this set to some default.