connecting to LAN server takes long when net is down
 

I have a local server that acts as mail (smtp and pop3) and I have fetchmail that checks every 15 minutes on the internet accounts if there’s mail. If there’s a connection problem, it just does not get no mail, and I can see in the log that it could not connect, which is fine and is actually a good way for me to know when the net started going down. My net hardly goes down but lately it’s been going down allot, mostly problems at my end. Now fixed.

But when there’s a connection problem, it takes bloody ages to resolve the domain, why? How can the internet being down affect the server which is on the lan? It takes bloody ages to resolve, and also to connect, once it’s connected then the rest is ok. Sometimes it will decide to do this when the internet is not down, but it does it all the time when it’s down. It’s really annoying because if I decide to start working on a php script the web server is super slow because each connection takes so long. Is there a way to fix this? I’m running Red Hat 8.0. Could this be a DNS issue somehow? I can’t see why though since the domain of the server is a samba hostname (like the computer name in windows) and not an actual domain.

It will be a DNS issue. When you try to resolve the dns name you are probably connecting to a DNS server on the Internet which you can't reach as your connection is down.

The feasability of the two best solutions depend on the size of your lan:
For a small lan just specify the hostname of the server in the hosts files of the LAN machines.
If you have a relatively large network then you may see benefit in setting up a local DNS server.

Oh ok thanks, that's what I thought, since when I added it in my host file it is faster, but I just find it strange that it has to connect to the net to get a netbios name.

I've been wanting to setup a DNS server anyway but I don't know how, played with bind a bit but had no clue what I was doing. :newbie: I'll start another topic as it's a completly different subject.