N66U doman = to DDNS = nslookup timeouts on LAN RDP.

[Deleted member 27741]

This is an obscure issue!

On a N66U with rmerlin 374.43 I had both ddns and the domain set to the same thing. For example-
DDNS- myn66u.asuscomm.com
N66U domain name- myn66u.asuscomm.com

This led to slow DNS lookups. Funny thing, the slow DNS lookups ONLY occurred while connected to another computer on the LAN by RDP- in the RDP session nslookup would timeout some of the time (2 second timeout). Weird. Easily solved by changing the domain to myn66u.com, but thought I would put it out there in case anyone else runs into this issue.

 

[Deleted member 27741]

Also, connection to the pptp vpn server on the N66U went a bit wonky. Error 769 when trying to connect from local computers. Works fine when N66U host name changed to myn66u.com (something different than DDNS).

Perhaps setting DDNS = to N66U domain name is just the wrong way of going about things?

 

[jwm1986]

The domain name part is what lookup zone the router places your clients in. If you aren't really part of a domain then this should be blank. If you have a local DNS server that is not in a domain you would put your DNS servers lookup zone in the box.

For example, I have a local DNS server for a few internal items and have everything else forwarded to an external DNS service. My lookup zone is called "Home" because when I tried to use my DDNS name as my Lookup zone and Domain Name on the router, things didn't work out so well. I was only able to get to internal items by IP with that setup.

Now that my DDNS name isn't in the router or my lookup zones everything works great! Hopefully that clears things up. I know it's been a bit since this thread was opened and I just happened to stumble across this site!

 

[Builder71]

The domain name part is what lookup zone the router places your clients in. If you aren't really part of a domain then this should be blank. ...

Why blank?
If you go to "LAN->DHCP Server->RT-N66U's Domain Name", it's perfectly fine to type "local" or "home" or whatever in this box.

I use "local" here, which means I can get to, for example, my NAS using NAS.local, not having to type it's IP address.

Handy.

 

[jwm1986]

If you want to make up a lookup zone that's just fine. I'm not saying you HAVE to leave it blank! But there's no point in assigning a lookup domain to everything if you're using the built in system as it doesn't go outside to look anyway. If you had a device called "NAS1" you should be able to just browse to "NAS1/" and it would look internally rather than searching the web for that destination. If you prefer to type a .lookupzone after whatever that's fine to of course.

 

[john9527]

I use "local" here, which means I can get to, for example, my NAS using NAS.local, not having to type it's IP address.

Handy.

Just something I remember reading (sorry, don't remember where) was that the .local domain had a special meaning for apple products and was not recommended for general use. I personally use .lan

 

[Deleted member 27741]

I actually started using the domain name thing in tandem with DDNS because I thought it helped me to connect to remote computers from the internet. It did. So my DDNS url would be something like "ddns.asuscomm.com" and my domain was also "ddns.asuscomm.com".

This seemed like a bit of a security issue (having the DDNS and domain exactly the same), so I went to using the openvpn VPN with TAP and it works great.

I still use a domain "mydomain.com" on the router, and calling devices on the LAN from home or the road through the vpn using "device.mydomain.com" works.

I guess at this point the mydomain.com part is probably superfluous, I could probably just use the name of the LAN device instead of adding the "mydomain.com" to the end.

 

[RMerlin]

I actually started using the domain name thing in tandem with DDNS because I thought it helped me to connect to remote computers from the internet. It did. So my DDNS url would be something like "ddns.asuscomm.com" and my domain was also "ddns.asuscomm.com".

This seemed like a bit of a security issue (having the DDNS and domain exactly the same), so I went to using the openvpn VPN with TAP and it works great.

I still use a domain "mydomain.com" on the router, and calling devices on the LAN from home or the road through the vpn using "device.mydomain.com" works.

I guess at this point the mydomain.com part is probably superfluous, I could probably just use the name of the LAN device instead of adding the "mydomain.com" to the end.

For internal (LAN) domain names, you should never use a public TLD such as a .com. DNS queries will get forwarded to the root level DNS for the specific TLD, which can lead to a lot of pain. Always use a non-standard TLD, such as .local or .lan (assuming the recent ICANN money grabbing TLDs didn't allocate either of these).

 

[Deleted member 27741]

I hoped if I explained my setup further I would get some good advice! Thanks, I still have so much to learn about this stuff.

I actually ended up dropping the domain altogether, since I have no problems remoting in using openvpn with the computer names now.