Router domain for local devices - not working

[aab203]

Hi,

I've just had my Vodafone service activated today (switched over from Plusnet) and have been going through the process of setting everything up again on the router.

One main change from the Plusnet router is the local domain used - from '.lan' to '.broadband'.  I've saved my bookmarks with the device name as the url rather than the raw IP address (for no real reason other than it's easier to identify what device I am looking at if the name is in the url).

Accessing the router via "http://vodafone.broadband" appears to work fine all of the time, however I cannot access any of my other devices this way.  For example I have a NAS named "Home-NAS".  When I try to navigate to "http://home-nas.broadband:8080" it doesn't work.  Same for any of my IP cameras etc.

I'm sure it did work at some point today but as of now all browsers I've tried (on laptop and on my mobile) just don't recognise the address. 

Does this mean there is something not working quite right with the DNS on the router?  Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

[CrimsonLiar]

Strictly Hone-NAS should never have worked thanks to it containing a dash/hypen.  It's one of those things that will work on some network devices and not on others.  The other problem you are going to find is (at least with the old HG2500 router) that devices can pick their names using a number of different protocols, and the old Vodafone router was not as comprehensive as many!

It used to be possible in the WEBUI to change the "broadband" back to "lan" though again that doesn't work on all devices some consider it to be reserved.  When it is reserved device.lan device.local and device.<myLocalDomain> should all work identically!

For myself, I have the local domain registered with Google Domains, so local, and Internet domains here are the same!  (which again wouldn't work with all equipment).

[aab203]

Thanks.  I am starting to think that its about the device name that the router originally picked up. I am a little OCD and re-named all of the devices in a consistent way, for my set up.

I did a test on one device that I remember seeing in its original name - my TV.  When I do a traceroute in Terminal for "samsung.broadband" it successfully sees it and translates it to its designated IP address.

I recall that some devices had no device name, with the router showing me just the mac address, before I renamed them.  I'm not sure if this means that I won't be able to use a 'friendly' name?

[CrimsonLiar]

If it's just for your personal benefit, and you're okay with local devices having fixed IP addresses you can allocate static or manual addresses to devices and edit the "hosts" file on your local machine to reach them by friendly names.  As those friendly names are translated locally you can even go back to using the hyphen!

[aab203]

That is true, I hadn't thought about the 'hosts' file.  I do have most of the devices set to a static IP as I have IP based access controls, so the 'hosts' file route shouldn't really pose any issues (I'll just have to remember its being used later down the line if I change my set up!).

Thanks for the suggestion.

[twowords]

Hi, I seem to have the same problem as you where only "http://vodafone.broadband" seems to work, but I cannot access my other device's webpage, in this case a raspberry pi. I can access it by typing the ip address but not using its hostname "http://raspberrypi.broadband".

Did you manage to solve this problem? I saw that there was an answer involving the hosts file, but this would only solve it for the specific device. I want to check if there was a network wide solution so the webpage could be accessed on a browser on any device on the network.

[CrimsonLiar]

The network-wide solution that would work, is to run Pi-Hole on the Raspberry Pi and use this as the network DHCP server.  One of the problems if you delve deep to device names is that they tend to be assigned by multiple different protocols.  While other ISP supplied routers may manage host and domain properly, some just wont.

[Cynric]

I also run a Pi-Hole which is an excellent solution.