Hardware DHCP,DNS

**Clippy** · 5 September 2011, 11:50

Is this for home?

If so and all it is going to be doing is DHCP & DNS then why not use and old (P4?) PC.

**RasputinDude** · 5 September 2011, 12:17

For home and home office, yes.

I am using an old PC at the moment, but I'd rather have a hardware solution.

**Platypus** · 5 September 2011, 12:18

Originally posted by RasputinDude View Post

Hi Folks,

Can anyone recommend a (reasonably priced) hardware solution for local DHCP and DNS on a local area network. I'm not really bothered if it is a router as well as I'm pretty happy with my old Draytek.

My Draytek does DHCP itself. Probably DNS too although I haven't looked at that. What model do you have? If I were you I'd check the specs and see if what you have will do what you want.

EDIT: See
http://www.draytek.co.uk/support/kb_vigor_dns.html

**Clippy** · 5 September 2011, 12:20

Originally posted by RasputinDude View Post

For home and home office, yes.

I am using an old PC at the moment, but I'd rather have a hardware solution.

Erm, a PC is hardware.

**b0redom** · 5 September 2011, 12:55

@Platypus - I think that's the DNS servers the Draytek will query and act as a proxy for. I think the OP wanted something which will do internal DNS for him, ie. toaster.myco.com, fridge.myco.com?

My Vigor 2800 won't do that. I guess something like a hacked router running DD-WRT might? Alternatively a really low powered PC like a HP microserver might work, with a minimal appliance distribution like:

pfSense - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

**RasputinDude** · 5 September 2011, 13:37

I think that's the DNS servers the Draytek will query and act as a proxy for. I think the OP wanted something which will do internal DNS for him, ie. toaster.myco.com, fridge.myco.com?

That's it. I've also got a 2800.

I can do this with a low powered PC easily, yes - I am already doing that with BIND and dhcpd. I was specifically looking for a box that I can just stuff away next to my router and forget about it.

**eek** · 5 September 2011, 13:39

Originally posted by RasputinDude View Post

That's it. I've also got a 2800.

I can do this with a low powered PC easily, yes - I am already doing that with BIND and dhcpd. I was specifically looking for a box that I can just stuff away next to my router and forget about it.

I doubt they exist nowadays as the functionality is not something many people would want to use separate from a server or a different router.

What about a pogoplug or one of the other plug type devices running debian?

**ee61re** · 5 September 2011, 13:58

Unless you have multiple subnets, etc, you should be able to resolve any hosts on the LAN using netbios, or if you really need to, you could add the relevant hostnames to the HOSTS file on each computer.

External DNS lookups would be passed by the router, onto your ISP (or you could set the router to use something like opendns, rather than your ISPs DNS)

I have DD-WRT on my router, and I don't *think* it does DNS itself, but I could be wrong.

**administrator** · 5 September 2011, 14:43

What do you need the DNS for? If as suggested above it is for internal usage for testing etc then why not just edit your hosts file? If you are using more than one machine that needs to resolve these addresses internally then fair enough but sounds like a pretty simple set up so though would mention...

<bah>Really should read all replies before replying. So WHS ^</bah>

Hardware DHCP,DNS