I've replace my ASUS RT-AC66U with a Netgear n900. The ASUS acted as my LAN DNS server, but the Netgear doesn't seem to be working. On the setup page > Advance > LAN Setup, I have the MAC, IP and host name configure under Address Reservation. I have "Use Router as DNS Server" checked.

Not working.

Suggestions?

Is your DHCP settings setup with the IP of this DNS server? That is how any hosts will get their DNS settings unless you are manually setting up IPs.

With a quick scan of the N900 online manual I could not find any reference to a local DNS setting nor the "use router as DNS" checkbox.

If installed, avahi it can be used as a local DNS.

https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...ns-4175659954/

The new Netgear router has the same IP as the previous ASUS router. Otherwise, I have no local settings on LAN hosts.

I can resolve domains external to the LAN, just not servers on the LAN.

Is it possible the Netgear doesn't support this feature?

If the servers have the avahi service installed then you can get to them by adding .local to their host name.

This is Slackware 15.0 and apparently avahi isn't part of the distro.

To get by, I've added my LAN hosts to each other's /etc/hosts file. I'm beginning to think that, while the Netgear does do DNS for public domain name, it doesn't include local/LAN host names.

I could not find anything in the manual...

If you assign all of your devices a static IP address then using /etc/hosts isn't a problem.

dnsmasq is another option and it is easy to configure. Its DHCP server integrates with its DNS to provide a local DNS.

https://thekelleys.org.uk/dnsmasq/doc.html

Well, I could also configure bind -- I've don't that before. But, as there are only 3 hosts on my LAN that need to be found by host name, it's easy enough to set them with static IPs (actually, the Netgear will do that without me having to configure the IP on the hosts), and I can make two entries in each of their /etc/host files. Easier than bind or dnsmasq set up, at this level.

I switched routers in the first place because I suspect that my ASUS is failing intermittently. I'll run with the Netgear for a while and if the network issues conclusively point to a failing ASUS, I'll buy a new router; either another ASUS or some other router that supports local DNS.

Well, I've continued to have intermittent Internet connection loss with the Netgear router, so the router isn't the problem. Today, I went to Spectrum and got a new cable modem. We'll see if that solves the problem or not.

I hooked up the ASUS router to the new cable modem and interestingly, it is not DNS resolving local host names either now. Very odd. When it was hooked up before it did so. I'll leave the entries in /etc/hosts for now. Maybe it just required time to resync tables.

I could not find anything in the ASUS RT-AC66U online manual about local DNS. It mentions a dynamic DNS service provided by Asus for remote access and setting up WAN DNS either manually or via the ISP.

I am not real impressed with Spectrum's hardware.

Day two with no intermittent Internet outages. Apparently the older ZOOM cable modem went bad. That was not Spectrum's modem. I bought it locally at MicroCenter about 9 years ago. The new one is from Spectrum and I got it because it is supposedly free.

As to the ASUS router doing local name resolution, that's back to working now. I don't know if the servers just needed time to refresh DNS stuff or if rebooting (i.e. resetting eth0/DHCP) did it, but I no longer need all local hosts in /etc/hosts. So, that's apparently not a feature of the Netgear router.

Fingers crossed that the new cable modem solved the problem.

Four days later ... Still no intermittent failures. Running with new cable modem and original ASUS router. The problem must have been a fail[ing] cable modem. Problem solved. Plus, I know that the ASUS will act as a name server for the local hosts and the Netgear does not. Good to know.