Windows Network Name Resolution - Experts needed!

[SimpleSi]

I'm having a bit of trouble trying to understand how my windows machines actually resolve names into ip addresses.

When I ran serverless Win98 networks, the automagic browser master mechanisim seemed to just automagically work (or sometimes not )

When I introduced W2k3 servers with DNS and DHCP I just thought that the DNS server was doing all the work and I was now doing things properly.

However, following an incident at two of my schools, I've come to think that my DNS server is not being using to resolve local devices such as cachepilots, linux print servers and wireless accesspoints (and probably not printers in somecases) and that I'm still basically using browse master mechanisims

Do any of you have say access points on your network and are able to address them by name rather than IP address and if so - how do you acheive this?

regards

Simon

[leco]

When using NSLOOKUP check that the DNS server is actually within your network and not looking at an external DNS server. Sometimes the databases on the local network get messed up (power cuts etc.) so the DNS and DHCP don't agree with each other.

[StewartKnight]

when I get DNS errors, for a quick fix, I use the servers IP address instead of it's name

i.e. map a drive

\\server\users

becomes

\\192.168.0.250\users

[Jon]

For items that may have static Ip address and therefore DHCP has not registered a DNS AHost record it is neccasary to do this manually.

To do this in your DNS console right click your forward lookup Zone and select New Host (a) record Fill in the host name and IP address and you are done...

For machines that may have the wrong ip address registered you could just run ipconfig /registerdns from a command prompt. This will sort out the AHost record for that machine.

[SimpleSi]

Are you using a WINS server?

No - does anyone else?

You can check what's going on with DNS by using NSLOOKUP.

Yes - I can prove DNS doesn't know about non-windows devices - I use it for cachepilot and its says

unknown - can't find cachepilot - non-existant domain

NSLOOKUP on windows clients is fine - returns their IP and IP of DNS server.
I don't have reverse DNS setup.

when I get DNS errors, for a quick fix, I use the servers IP address instead of it's name

Yes-thats works for me as well
But I'd like to know what is resolving non windows clients on a good day - and then I can try and work out what has gone wrong on 20% of computers in two of my schools!

For items that may have static Ip address and therefore DHCP has not registered a DNS AHost record it is neccasary to do this manually.

To do this in your DNS console right click your forward lookup Zone and select New Host (a) record Fill in the host name and IP address and you are done...

Thats what I used to believe was the thing to do.

However, I believe that if aI try to enter the ip of an access point and I want to call this ap1, that this enters a name called ap1.school.local (where school.local is the arbitary domain name I chose when setting up the server) and not the Non-FQDN name of ap1.

I believe that if I could set up ap1 and get it to resolve using ping ap1 I'd be well on way to having a setup that didn't rely upon automagic (which is what seems to happen at the moment)

regards

Simon

[SYNACK]

Yes - I can prove DNS doesn't know about non-windows devices - I use it for cachepilot and its says

This is normal for devicies that are not set up to register themselves in DNS automatically

NSLOOKUP on windows clients is fine - returns their IP and IP of DNS server.
I don't have reverse DNS setup.

I would setup a reverse DNS zone for your networks subnets as some windows features use this to communicate, this can cause issues with some software and network functions.

Yes-thats works for me as well
But I'd like to know what is resolving non windows clients on a good day - and then I can try and work out what has gone wrong on 20% of computers in two of my schools!

NETBIOS over TCP/IP and the computer browser service may be picking up the slack in these situations. This is dependent on which computer is elected the browser master for your network and takes some time to register new stations. This in conjunction with cache could give you quite goo partial name resolution.

Thats what I used to believe was the thing to do.

However, I believe that if aI try to enter the ip of an access point and I want to call this ap1, that this enters a name called ap1.school.local (where school.local is the arbitary domain name I chose when setting up the server) and not the Non-FQDN name of ap1.

I believe that if I could set up ap1 and get it to resolve using ping ap1 I'd be well on way to having a setup that didn't rely upon automagic (which is what seems to happen at the moment)

You do want to add a host record for each of the things that do not automatically register themselves with DNS. This will add the school.local stuff on the end but all network adapters inside your local network automatically suffix that onto the end anyway as it is a local resource. This suffix information should be included in the information that is pushed out to your hosts with DHCP.

You may also want to setup a WINS server and point to it using DHCP as well because this service helps out with legacy name resolution requests and gives you a secondary resolution source. It is also possible to set up DNS to consult WINS if it does not know the address.