topic Re: Hub Two not resolving local host names in My Router

Hub Two not resolving local host names

ksaro1 — Wed, 24 Aug 2022 12:47:56 GMT

On my Hub Two I can see the host names of all connected devices when I go into Home -> My devices page of the hub's manager. However, none of these devices can contact each other by their host names. So it would appear that the Hub Two isn't resolving the local hosts.

My IPv4 configuration is attached as a screenshot.

When I was on PN FTTC I used my own router and it was able to resolve local hosts so I'm assuming there is some configuration I am missing.

Re: Hub Two not resolving local host names

Dan_the_Van — Wed, 24 Aug 2022 13:14:35 GMT

@ksaro1 are you saying your windows devices are not discovering other windows devices?

See here

Dan

Re: Hub Two not resolving local host names

bobpullen — Wed, 24 Aug 2022 14:10:32 GMT

I have a vague recollection that the actual device hostname stored in the hub's config is not necessarily the same as the 'friendly' name visible in the network map.

If this is the case, then I wouldn't expect you to be able to communicate with other LAN devices using the name that is displayed (assuming it's possible in the first place).

Assume you are using the hub for DNS resolution?

Edit: I've answered my own question by looking at your screengrab - you are not. You are assigning Cloudflare's DNS addresses to local devices via DHCP. This means anything connected the the hub will be going direct to Cloudflare and Cloudflare has no awareness of your local network.

Re: Hub Two not resolving local host names

ksaro1 — Wed, 24 Aug 2022 14:26:39 GMT

@Dan_the_Van wrote:

@ksaro1 are you saying your windows devices are not discovering other windows devices?

See here

Dan

No. None of my devices are WIndows. I can see all devices if I use their IP address. I can't see them if I use their host name.

For example, I have a USB stick attached to my TP-Link access point (AP). The AP has a host name on the home network. But if I try to access the USB storage from my Mac or Raspberry PI using the host name it's not found. I have to use the IP address, which is OK for this device since the AP is ethernet connected and therefore has a static IP address. However, my Raspberry PI is wireless, so each time it reboots it gets a new IP address.

Re: Hub Two not resolving local host names

ksaro1 — Wed, 24 Aug 2022 14:33:49 GMT

@bobpullen wrote:

Edit: I've answered my own question by looking at your screengrab - you are not. You are assigning Cloudflare's DNS addresses to local devices via DHCP. This means anything connected the the hub will be going direct to Cloudflare and Cloudflare has no awareness of your local network.

Yes, that is correct. However, when on the FTTC service with PN and using my own Billion router, I also pointed that router to Cloudflare's DNS nameservers. However, for the internal network the Billion resolved the names of hosts since no external DNS server would know the local names. I would assume/hope that the Hub Two router had a similar function in that it could/should resolve the hosts on the local, 192.168.1.xxx, network and pass other requests to the Cloudflare DNS nameservers.

What i'm saying is that all worked fine before my move to Full Fibre and the Hub Two router. And I'm hoping I can achieve the same with the new set up somehow.

Re: Hub Two not resolving local host names

bobpullen — Wed, 24 Aug 2022 14:54:52 GMT

The Billion router may have handled the DNS assignment differently by allocating the Cloudflare addresses to the WAN interface. In this configuration, local devices would still use the Billion router for lookups which would then get forwarded to Cloudflare where appropriate.

This is not how the custom DNS implmentation on the Hub Two works.

You could elect to give all of your devices static DHCP assignments so the local IP doesn't change and then reference devices by IP instead. If you must use hostnames then you could achieve something via local host file entries on each machine or run something like Pi-hole on the Raspberry Pi and have that look after DNS (with Cloudflare as the upstream resolver).

Re: Hub Two not resolving local host names

ksaro1 — Wed, 24 Aug 2022 15:48:20 GMT

@bobpullen wrote:

You could elect to give all of your devices static DHCP assignments so the local IP doesn't change and then reference devices by IP instead.

See attached screenshots. For some reason on my Hub Two it looks like you can't have DHCP assign static IP addresses to a wireless connection.

Re: Hub Two not resolving local host names

Dan_the_Van — Wed, 24 Aug 2022 16:02:53 GMT

Is the host PITV the same hardware with randomise MAC address switched enabled? You'll need to disable to keep the same IP Address, new MAC address will result in a new IP Address

or do you have two PITV. I never like having the same hostname as its confusing

Dan

Re: Hub Two not resolving local host names

ksaro1 — Wed, 24 Aug 2022 16:16:58 GMT

@Dan_the_Van wrote:

Is the host PITV the same hardware with randomise MAC address switched enabled? You'll need to disable to keep the same IP Address, new MAC address will result in a new IP Address

or do you have two PITV. I never like having the same hostname as its confusing

Dan

Ok, I checked and the RPI4 randomises the mac address by default. I've now configured it not to do this and I'll reboot and then set the new mac address's IP address as the static IP address.

However, the uploaded screenshots show that even for the existing mac address, the Hub Two router doesn't actually save the change to the DHCP assignment. It's hard to show just with the screenshots, but the sequence was

Changed the DHCP assignment to be permanent
Saved the change.
Re-listed the devices
re-selected the pitv device
it showed the DHCP assignment had reverted to Always use this IP address as No.

Re: Hub Two not resolving local host names

Dan_the_Van — Wed, 24 Aug 2022 16:33:21 GMT

I will admit I gave up with the Hub Two, I needed something more configurable which also supported a mesh system, I also found the DHCP GUI rather clunky and caused me unnecessary frustration while attempting to set up static IP Address.

Does the issue still happen now you have a static MAC address?

Edit: I would delete any duplicate entries keeping the real (current) MAC address

Re: Hub Two not resolving local host names

ksaro1 — Wed, 24 Aug 2022 16:38:53 GMT

...bosh... OK, configuring the RPI4 to use a static mac address did the trick. Oddly too, the Hub Two seemed to detect this and it automatically set the Always use IP address to true. Bizarre.....

Yes, I think the Hub Two is very primitive compared to many routers out there in terms of its capabilities. However, I am sticking with it for now because its 5gHz antennas have a much better coverage than any of the other routers I've used so far. I've had Netgear, Billion, TP-link and the old sagemm one from PN and they all failed to cover as much of my property with 5gHz as the Hub Two. However, they all (other than the old PN one) had many many more functions than the Hub Two does.

Once I start getting wifi 6/6E devices I may rethink the use of the Hub Two though.

Thanks for the tips!

Re: Hub Two not resolving local host names

ksaro1 — Mon, 05 Sep 2022 10:38:06 GMT

CORRECTION - I discovered that my local computers were bypassing the Hub Two for DNS resolution. Once I pointed all local computers to my Hub Two then local name resolution, as well as global name resolution, worked as expected.

Re: Hub Two not resolving local host names

pvmb — Sat, 10 Sep 2022 15:31:44 GMT

...What steps did you take to direct all your computers at the Hub Two for DNS?

TIA

I just received my new Hub Two router today. It started up and worked easily, but I am finding similar types of problems.

On my Win8 notebook with the Technicolor TG582n router I used to be able to ping the router by name as 'router' (or 'dsldevice.lan' - the latter seemingly something to do with the OS or router) whereas now I seem only to be able to ping the router by IP address. It's hosts file is the default with no entries added by me. (So how did it do it?)

Also, if I try to telnet to the new router all I get is: "Connecting To 192.168.1.254...Could not open connection to the host, on port 23: Connect failed"

Is there anything that can be done about this?

Re: Hub Two not resolving local host names

Baldrick1 — Sat, 10 Sep 2022 15:36:50 GMT

@pvmb

The Hub 2 doesn’t support Telnet instructions.

Why would you need multiple ways to ping your router?

Re: Hub Two not resolving local host names

pvmb — Sat, 10 Sep 2022 16:01:16 GMT

Telnet not available on Hub Two? Oh dear! that means we are stuck with what we can/can't do via the configuration web page. Unless we can download configuration/edit/upload configuration file.

Why would I not want to ping devices by name? That's what DNS is for... I have no idea where the notebook picked up it's names for the old router, it just did it by itself.

Actually, I am confused now over what exactly I could do and what I couldn't (I also have a very old networked HP LaserJet with a fixed IP). I think I may have to temporarily restore the TG 582n as the router to check out exactly what I could do.

Re: Hub Two not resolving local host names

ksaro1 — Sat, 10 Sep 2022 17:17:32 GMT

@pvmb wrote:

...What steps did you take to direct all your computers at the Hub Two for DNS?

TIA

:

On my Win8 notebook with the Technicolor TG582n router I used to be able to ping the router by name as 'router' (or 'dsldevice.lan' - the latter seemingly something to do with the OS or router) whereas now I seem only to be able to ping the router by IP address. It's hosts file is the default with no entries added by me. (So how did it do it?)

I pointed the resolver config file on the local host machines to 192.168.1.254 (IP address of the Hub 2). I depends on your OS on how the resolver is configured. On my Mac I use the Settings menu and on the Raspberry Pi's I edited /etc/resolv.conf. (I somehow had these all pointing to an external DNS server?) Once I directed all my local hosts to use the Hub 2 as their DNS server then local hostname lookups worked.

However, I don't know the host name of the actual Hub 2 router, as I never need to access it by hostname. It may have one, but I am not familiar with how to find out if it does or doesn't.

Re: Hub Two not resolving local host names

Champnet — Sat, 10 Sep 2022 18:13:58 GMT

If you tracert the router's IP address result should show device 'name'.

Re: Hub Two not resolving local host names

Champnet — Sat, 10 Sep 2022 19:08:04 GMT

Don’t think my suggestion wii work as l’ve just found an entry in my host file.

Will look tomorrow to see if there’s another way….

Re: Hub Two not resolving local host names

pvmb — Sun, 11 Sep 2022 11:00:32 GMT

Just to confirm. Back on TG582n router at the moment.

ping router --> router.lan [192.128.1.254]
ping dsldevice --> dsldevice.lan [192.128.1.254]

In fact, unlike the OP, I can ping by name hosts on the lan identified by the Hub Two. But, so far the Hub itself has not declared itself by name so can only ping its IP address directly.

Re: Hub Two not resolving local host names

Browni — Sun, 11 Sep 2022 11:49:01 GMT

Did you try a tracert as suggested by @Champnet?

I did on my Asus router and it returned a pingable name.

PS C:\Users\ian> tracert 192.168.1.254 Tracing route to DSL-AC88U-4DB0 [192.168.1.254] over a maximum of 30 hops: 1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms DSL-AC88U-4DB0 [192.168.1.254] Trace complete. PS C:\Users\ian> ping DSL-AC88U-4DB0 Pinging DSL-AC88U-4DB0 [192.168.1.254] with 32 bytes of data: Reply from 192.168.1.254: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=64 Reply from 192.168.1.254: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=64 Reply from 192.168.1.254: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=64 Reply from 192.168.1.254: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=64 Ping statistics for 192.168.1.254: Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss), Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds: Minimum = 0ms, Maximum = 0ms, Average = 0ms PS C:\Users\ian>