Telnet - Connection refused when using hostname, connects fine with IP

Question

I'm trying to connect to a telnet server from a windows 7 machine. The telnet server has an IP 123.4.5.6 and a hostname of myserver

Running telnet 123.4.5.6 8080 works fine

However when I try to use the server's hostname it fails to connect;

telnet myserver 8080 fails. Yet a

ping myserver gives the correct IP, 123.4.5.6

What could be causing this? When I try to connect using a web browser I get the same behavior (using the IP is fine, using the hostname fails)..?

When I run nslookup;

C:\Windows\system32>nslookup myserver
Server:  myserver
Address:  123.4.5.6

*** myserver can't find myserver: Non-existent domain

The output from ipconfig /all:

Windows IP Configuration

   Host Name . . . . . . . . . . . . : D004
   Primary Dns Suffix  . . . . . . . : mydomain.local
   Node Type . . . . . . . . . . . . : Hybrid
   IP Routing Enabled. . . . . . . . : No
   WINS Proxy Enabled. . . . . . . . : No
   DNS Suffix Search List. . . . . . : mydomain.local

Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection 3:
       Connection-specific DNS Suffix  . : mydomain.local
       Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Intel(R) Ethernet Connection I217-LM
       Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 34-17-EB-AB-C4-74
       DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : Yes
       Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes
       IPv4 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.23.108(Preferred)
       Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
       Lease Obtained. . . . . . . . . . : Tuesday, 5 August 2014 12:29:17 PM
       Lease Expires . . . . . . . . . . : Saturday, 9 August 2014 12:29:16 PM
       Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.23.1
       DHCP Server . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.16.5
       DNS Servers . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.16.5
                                           192.168.16.2
       Primary WINS Server . . . . . . . : 192.168.16.2
       NetBIOS over Tcpip. . . . . . . . : Enabled

So I've tried using 123.4.5.6 as the DNS server (its running its own DNS but this doesnt seem to work). I've added 123.4.5.6 myserver to the hosts and the lmhosts files

Solution

Well, the output of nslookup myserver suggests (a) that you're resolving DNS queries at myserver/123.4.5.6, and (b) that its database doesn't contain a record for its own dns name. This would explain why telnet fails but not why ping works.

On a Windows machine I would try appending a literal dot to all DNS names just to make sure they're treated as absolute ones and no suffixes are added by the Windows API. After all, ping and telnet may call the API in different ways.

Finally, your ipconfig listing doesn't help much because IP addresses in it do not correspond to the ones in other listings. Please, update it.

Comments

[I say Reinstate Monica]

Is myserver on your local network or somewhere else such that traffic has to be routed to get to it? Any chance you could post the output of the IPCONFIG /all command as run from your machine?

[NightWolf]

myserver is somewhere else -traffic needs to be routed to get to it. Added IPCONFIG /all to the question

[I say Reinstate Monica]

Can you PING myserver then run the command NBTSTAT -n and post the result?