Problems Resolving Internal Hostnames

[BenBru]

Hi, all

I'm rusty on networking, but have just taken delivery of a new fibre line and EE hub.  Access to the outside world is brilliant.

When I link a NAS in to the router, I can reach it by IP address but not by name.  When I do ping -a for the address I can see the hostname, but if I just use the hostname I get "Ping request could not find host..."

If I use nslookup for the hostname, I get "DNS request timed out".

So it feels like the EE router knows about the names of the machines (and shows them in the EE control panel) but can't route network requests using the machine name.

Am I missing a setting somewhere that would allow me to resolve a hostname on my local network, plugged in to the router, to the IP address?

Thanks

Ben

[XRaySpeX]

For the convenience of addressing your device by its hostname you need to add it to your 'hosts' file. For Windows this will be found in "C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc".

[BenBru]

Thanks for this, and I know it will resolve the problem on a single device, but there are a few devices that will use this NAS server and lots of devices (like TV) where I can't alter the hosts file.  Is there a way of getting the router to resolve names to IP addresses?

Ben

[BenBru]

Sorry to write again, but I can't back up my devices any more because the EE hub won't resolve names.  I get the point about hosts files, but I really want the network to handle that for me.

Where I am is that I can see connected devices, and their names, in the "My Devices" section.

• Pinging the hostname of the device leads to "Ping request could not find host"
• Pinging the IP address brings a response
• Ping -a the IP address brings the device name and the ping response

This happens for the 2/3 named devices on the network.

Is there a setting anywhere that would mean the hub would know about addresses but refuse to resolve them?

Alternatively, if I factory reset the box will I have to re-enter any credentials to re-join the internet?

Thanks

Ben

[XRaySpeX]

The router only knows about device names from what the devices reported to them but it is not a DNS of itself & so will only route accesses by IP addy, not by name. If you reserve the IPs to "always use this IP" at least you'll know you are addressing the right device in your backup.

If you reset the router you can either re-enter the BB creds or allow the EE system to reset them after a time.