DNS and Hostname Questions

[CaptainDad]

If I enter IP / hostname pairs into the Hosts section in the Settings / System screen, should they resolve from any client? I realize that the hostname I assign to the static lease will resolve, but I am trying to specify a shorter name for a few of my machines. Is that box only used for Parental Control IP resolution? I tried appending .lan to the shorter hostnames, too, but they still didn’t resolve.

Also, I have selected Open DNS Family Shield in the Default parental control profile. If I select System Default for DNS Servers in my other profiles, will they inherit the Open DNS Family Sheild DNS setting?

[support]

If you add an entry to Hosts, you should be able to resolve the name from any connected device. But it might take a few minutes before your additions take effect.

If you use System Default DNS servers in your other profiles, you are using the DNS servers listed in the Status page Internet section. Those will be IP addresses assigned by upstream DHCP servers (for example, your ISP or an upstream router). But you can override the System default DNS servers in the Internet Settings page.

[CaptainDad]

Thanks for the DNS clarification!

I could never get the hostnames to resolve, but I might have missed something. I added entries to the HOSTS section on the router a couple of days ago. I removed my local HOSTS entries yesterday, flushed my local resolver cache and tried to ping them but they still did not resolve. I used nslookup specifying the pCWRT router, but the lookups still failed. The names I gave them for their DHCP reservation still work fine. I haven’t tried SSH’ing to the router to test it, though. Perhaps what I am trying to do is not possible right now?

[support]

When you add a host name which is not a fully qualified domain name (FQDN), you need to append .lan to the name. For example: mypc.lan. Then you can ping the host with “ping mypc”, or “ping mypc.lan”.

[Author]

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