Can Wireless routers act as DNS servers?

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Boot_Comp

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Hi,

I was wondering if a wireless router can be made to act as a DNS server for an local LAN? (mainly to allow devices to be identified with their names instead of IP's)
I know this can be done with static IP's and updating hosts.txt but this would be a major headache when there are numerous devices and they are added / removed regularly?

Does anyone know if there any routers capable of this?

TIA
 
Your router is not a DNS server.

You have 2 options

1. edit each hosts file, (here the simplest option is to just create 1 hostfile with all the details & then paste it on each computer)

2. Create a windows 2003/ even 2000 NT server & install DNS, this can be a virtual server or a physical one. it would need 512mb ram max, if 2000 then 384mb ram would do.
 
I dont think there is a need for a DNS server for a LAN. I have my one Win7 machine as an internet gateway, and has enabled ICS on it, and give it's IP as DNS on other machines in the LAN, and has set its own IP as DNS on the gateway machine's LAN NIC.I can access any machines on n/w by using its name rather than IP, though Ip too will work. Just make sure the DNS client service is running in services.msc.

Though a DNS server would be needed if you have different class N/W routed within your house and you need to access them using names.
 
@boot_comp, Well I just did that and yes on my wireless router. So if its inside the routers network or outside the routers network, the hostname resolve correctly. For e.g. ubuntu.pun.linuxtechie.net resolves correctly to internal (192.168.175.5) or (bsnl's ip address). How? I used tomato along with ddns. Works great. Tomato has a small dns server thats good enough for small network.

+LT
 
@linuxtechie: Cool, that sounds interesting. However just want to ask if this would work for a internal network (hmmm I guess this would be an intranet)?
There is no need to be able to identify hosts from outside the network (i.e. the internet) it is mainly for identifying machines (different OS'es) within the "intranet" by their names instead of ip address (which keeps changing).

--- Updated Post - Automerged ---

Ok. I been doing some more reading and I guess Dynamic DNS is indeed what is required for this kind of a setup.

My current wireless router is the ISP provided one which I dont want to tamper with. Please let me know if anyone has any recommendations on a good router for this? (it would also need to have 1 or 2 USB ports for print server functionality)
 
Could someone who has configured dynamic DNS on their router please confirm if this can be done on an independent internal network (i.e. without any internet connection)?

TIA
 
I dont entirely understand what you are trying to accomplish.

1. You're talking about a LAN. Is it all just one network (192.168.1.x)?
2. Are you running a service or services on your LAN?
3. Why exactly do you need DNS on a LAN? If you want to access any machine just use \\machinename\

I'm obviously not seeing the whole picture. Perhaps if you could paint it out more vividly.
 
Boot_Comp said:
No one here configure this before?
Click to expand...
I currently have DynamicDns configured on my router.

Its damn easy.

Most Router have the tab for it in the configuration page sometimes called DynDns or DDNS or DynamicDNS etc.

All you need to do is register on Dyndns.org with what domain name you want to register then you enter the login details & the site on the router config & that is all you need to do.
 
The hosts are a mix of Linux (several flavors) and Windows devices (also several XP, vista and 7).

The main criteria is to be able to address any of the machines on the n/w (with or without an internet connection) by their host names internally by the other hosts on the n/w (when I tried doing this the windows machines on the n/w were able to resole the ip's of the other windows machines but not some of the linux ones).

Access from outside/internet to a host on the n/w would be good to have but not a necessity.

Is there a way to achieve this without the hosts file modification (which feels a bit like a clumsy solution that would only be temporary at best)?

Also does the dyndns.org way address the problem of being able to address hosts on the n/w internally even when there is no internet connection?

--- Updated Post - Automerged ---
Satan said:
I dont entirely understand what you are trying to accomplish.

1. You're talking about a LAN. Is it all just one network (192.168.1.x)?

2. Are you running a service or services on your LAN?

3. Why exactly do you need DNS on a LAN? If you want to access any machine just use \\machinename\

I'm obviously not seeing the whole picture. Perhaps if you could paint it out more vividly.
Click to expand...
Yes to 1 & 2

Need to be able to resolve any machines (different OS) name to ip on this lan. And no they don't all have SAMBA installed (and I don't think that would be necessary would it?)
 
@Boot_Comp, I think I understand what you want. you want your router to act as a DNS server for your internal network and it should not depend on internet connection. so DDNS method is out.

so for example, instead of having to remember IP address 192.168.1.56, you are looking to map that ip to say node56 and this host will resolved to actual 192.168.1.56 by the DNS server running in your router.

Is this is what you need, then it can be done;)

Steps:

1) Get any of dd-wrt.com supported routers available in market.

2) Replace standard DD-WRT DHCP service "udhcpd". And Setup DNSMasq as Default DHCP + DNS Server.

3) Configure DNS server & add entries for mapping of host & Ip address

Further reading:

http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/DNSMasq_Local_Network

http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/DNSMasq_as_DHCP_server

Hope it helps
 
Yup, am basically trying to see if a router can act as a DNS for an intranet (rather than having a separate DNS server).

Thanks for the links, from the description you've mentioned about this I believe this would be what I am looking for (am having a look at the dd-wrt threads you've mentioned now).

Just to be clear when you talk about DDNS are you referring to the Managed DNS, Domain Names and more! - DynDNS.com hosting service and not the actual Dynamic DNS protocol?
 
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