Broadband routers and DNS

Is it a usual feature of broadband routers to have DNS servers? Having
a network of two machines and a network printer I run DNS on my linux
box to ensure that my home network domain names work.

Now I have broadband I have a router, a 3com 3cr856-95 to connect to
the internet, rather than using NAT on my linux box for dial up. As
the router can do DHCP if I like it, the lack of DNS seems an ommission.

What do you do when you have an all windows network?

I'm just curious.

On another note, do any routers have an alternative of a usb port for the
uplink?
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In article <bqj3cj$m3h$(E-Mail Removed)>, Peter Chant wrote:
> Is it a usual feature of broadband routers to have DNS servers? Having
> a network of two machines and a network printer I run DNS on my linux
> box to ensure that my home network domain names work.
>
> Now I have broadband I have a router, a 3com 3cr856-95 to connect to
> the internet, rather than using NAT on my linux box for dial up. As
> the router can do DHCP if I like it, the lack of DNS seems an ommission.
>
> What do you do when you have an all windows network?
>
I'm not sure exactly what's happening, but if I set the DNS addresses in
the computers to the address of the router, it all works, which seems to
imply that the router is doing NAT and local DNS. I can't, however, get the
same thing to work with Linux. It wants domain names and usernames and
there is nothing to indicate whether it means local names (e.g.
"workgroup", which works in Windows), or my ISP's names. I'm wondering if I
would have to set up one of my computers to act as a Linux DNS for this to
work, as nothing I've yet tried gives the simple results I can get with
Windows, where I only need to switch on the computer I want to use.

Rod.

In article <(E-Mail Removed)>,
Roderick Stewart <(E-Mail Removed)> writes:
>>
> I'm not sure exactly what's happening, but if I set the DNS addresses in
> the computers to the address of the router, it all works, which seems to
> imply that the router is doing NAT and local DNS. I can't, however, get the
> same thing to work with Linux. It wants domain names and usernames and
> there is nothing to indicate whether it means local names (e.g.
> "workgroup", which works in Windows), or my ISP's names. I'm wondering if I
> would have to set up one of my computers to act as a Linux DNS for this to
> work, as nothing I've yet tried gives the simple results I can get with
> Windows, where I only need to switch on the computer I want to use.

Hmm, maybe the router forwards dns quieries somewhere but does not
work as a domain name server per se? It sounds like the windows machines
talk to each other happily because they are in the same workgroup. (?)

I suppose you would get similar behavoir if you pointed /etc/resolv.conf
entries at your router. This solution would not resolve domain names on
your local network. For that you would need to set up local dns. However
if it is a simple network I suppose you could manually add entries to
/etc/hosts.

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Have you considered setting up DNS to resolve locally , and forwarding
any non local queries to the router(which is actually a proxy for the
ISP dns servers.

Andrew

Peter Chant wrote:
> In article <(E-Mail Removed)>,
> Roderick Stewart <(E-Mail Removed)> writes:
>
>>I'm not sure exactly what's happening, but if I set the DNS addresses in
>>the computers to the address of the router, it all works, which seems to
>>imply that the router is doing NAT and local DNS. I can't, however, get the
>>same thing to work with Linux. It wants domain names and usernames and
>>there is nothing to indicate whether it means local names (e.g.
>>"workgroup", which works in Windows), or my ISP's names. I'm wondering if I
>>would have to set up one of my computers to act as a Linux DNS for this to
>>work, as nothing I've yet tried gives the simple results I can get with
>>Windows, where I only need to switch on the computer I want to use.
>
>
> Hmm, maybe the router forwards dns quieries somewhere but does not
> work as a domain name server per se? It sounds like the windows machines
> talk to each other happily because they are in the same workgroup. (?)
>
> I suppose you would get similar behavoir if you pointed /etc/resolv.conf
> entries at your router. This solution would not resolve domain names on
> your local network. For that you would need to set up local dns. However
> if it is a simple network I suppose you could manually add entries to
> /etc/hosts.
>

In article <3fd6d916$0$9387$(E-Mail Removed)>,
Andrew <(E-Mail Removed)> writes:
>
> Have you considered setting up DNS to resolve locally , and forwarding
> any non local queries to the router(which is actually a proxy for the
> ISP dns servers.
>

My DNS resolves locally I have not got forwarding set up, just the
usual root servers file in named.cache . I did have the IP address
of NTL's dns servers down for forwarding, but quickly deleted this when
NTL's servers fell over once.

Actually this has drifted away from my original question, which was
what would I do if I had two windows machines, neither of which
run full time and I want to resolve local DNS names?

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