DNS on router

One thought I had was whether the entry on the router really should be just

Mymadeupco.net= 192.168.1.3?

It should be the hostname of your server.

No, it's not ambiguous at all. The hostname is the name you gave the server when you set it up. The whole name. "Server" is not the name of anything.

It's kinda a function of your router's microcode. My router runs dd-wrt microcode. It has basic local DNS. You put in the domain name in one field and then you list your unqualified host names. I can ping both the fully qualified name and the unqualified name on my LAN and it gives me back the IP.

If it works you did it right.

Open a shell and enter "hostname". See what happens. Meanwhile, work on your attitude.

Hi

Linc's right. The word "Server" is not the name of anything. DNS hostnames are FQDNs and can't be anything else. "Server" is simply the computer name and if you take Bonjour into consideration (which you need to) you'd have Server.local which is not a hostname either. Neither of these last two are resolvable which is the crucial difference.

FWIW I'd stay clear of using Routers/Firewalls to provide DNS Services for any LAN small or large. OS X Server's DNS offering is much better than it used to be so use that instead if it's the only server on your network. If you have a Window's Server I'd use that above anything else to provide DNS and DHCP services. Much better in the long run. One final thing and only if you can afford it - which you can with OS X Server as it's very cheap - don't restrict yourself to just one DNS server. Have at least two.

My 2p.

HTH?

Tony

FWIW[1], get out of 192.168.1.0/24 while you're network is small or in transition, particularly if you ever plan to use VPNs to access your network. That and 192.168.0.0/24 subnet are used in many hotels and coffee shops and home networks, and VPNs are based on IP routing and IP routing doesn't work well with the same subnet on both ends of the connection. Use another subnet somewhere else in 192.168.0.0/16, or in 172.16.0.0/12, or in the 10.0.0.0/8 private blocks.

FWIW[2], If this router doesn't provide a way to register A or AAAA records or CNAMEs, then it doesn't contain a DNS server, or doesn't contain a DNS server that's worth using.

I have a small personal VPN I use regularly across three locatons.

The subnets I control are: 10.0.1.0/24 and 192.168.1.0/24.

The third subnet I use is 10.63.1.0/24.

When I travel I mostly use OpenVPN on an iPad together with Verizon's cell data service.

For public internet names I use a "real" DNS service. It has 'A' records and so on. When an IP changes my routers update the public DNS with DDNS.

I haven't had any problems with subnet conflict or with any lack of formal DNS function in my routers.

In my expereince Macs routinely have at least three seperate names.

The Unix "hostname" which corresponds with DNS (if one is being used).

The "computer name" chosen by the user or assigned automatically by Mac setup.

The "bonjour name" which is either derived from computer name or explicitly chosen by the user.

If you bind a Mac to a Windows Domain and/or Apple OpenLDAP Server it will usually appear in those directories under its "computer name". It is possilbe to bind a Mac to more than one directory. In a Windows Domain - DNS is integrated with the windows directory so in that case "hostname" is usually the same as "computer name".

Needless to say all of this naming is confusng enough to drive one mad. :-)

How much gear do you have? A /24 gets you 254 devices at a time, and more than that assuming some part of the total network population is "transient."

You'll have to inventory your current and planned gear to see if it can all deal with a /16. (A subset of the IP equipment around only allows the configuration of a /24, and has no means to implement a /16.)

I usually run the IP address space and subnets first by physical locality (and usually with a /24, due to the occasional bit of dumb-as-a-fence-post IP gear), and only then by organizational function if and when that's necessary. A key detail being site-to-site and backbone links, and partitioning the network against excessive traffic. The routers deal with getting the packets from one subnet and one locality across either a routed link configured for traffic segmentation, or occasionally for security, or across a point-to-point link or backbone link between (among) locations.

Within a subnet, various printers and servers usually get fixed addresses. Servers want fixed addresses and some of the other devices that tend to have problems DHCP, even if they claim support (qv: "dumb-as-a-fence-post"). The APs I commonly use can deal with DHCP-assigned addresses, though YMMV depending on your particular APs. Everything else in a given segment of a physical network or VLAN usually gets an address out of the same DHCP pool for that subnet.

Do you have or plan to add IP routers capable of dealing with subnet routing? You'll need that for getting from the /24 out into the /16 minimally, and I'd generally tend to avoid overlapping subnets as it makes my head hurt.

If you really do have that much network gear, the amount of traffic possible in a reasonably-populated /16 can flood many network connections and devices.

You're also intentionally heading for DHCP server(s) that you'll be manually mapping the MAC addresses of the devices for all those address ranges into? That's a fair chunk of work to create and mantain (even with VLANs), and I don't (personally) see any direct gain from that effort here.

ajm_from_WA wrote:

so bottom line is that it would not be easy to have my static IP's in one set of ranges and the dynamics in another?

Easy? It's easy to do given the right networking gear, and assuming all of the gear involved can deal with a /16.

Like most things in networking, the network design is a trade-off. What are the expected benefits? How much effort is involved? How much will the benefits cost? Then what happens when you get that dumb-as-a-post IP widget handed to you?

Assigning notebook computers and tablets static addresses or setting up DHCP reservations for specific devices is usually more work than its worth. (I've done that for some environments, but it's not something I'd prefer to do.)

I wouldn't chose the proposed /16 network design. Not based on what has been posted so far. My preference is for simpler and preferably segmented or VLAN'd networks as device counts increase, given the choice. Bigger networks can get unwieldy to manage and troubleshoot. With subnets and network segments and routing, I can also isolate faults, if (when?) that becomes necessary.

But unless you're working with a whole lot more devices or much more network traffic than has been mentioned so far, a /24 will probably work fine here; the first 10 or 50 or 100 addresses "reserved" for static-addressed devices, and the next ~150 for DHCP widgets. (The lack of an existing DNS server or two implies this isn't a particularly large network, too.)

But the bottom line is this: it's your network, and your call.