How to switch from a call by IP address to a call by Device name on a home network?

Question

On my home network, I can log into the other two from my computer. In the first one I go by the command CD \ <Device name> \ <Folder>, and in the second - CD \ <IP address> \ <Folder>. Addressing the IP address is very inconvenient, since when the modem is restarted, IP address changes and each time after that I need to change the command. How to switch from a call by IP address to a call by Device name? What needs to be changed and where?

Answer 1

If you can't find any DNS settings in your router, or your ISP can't help you, here is one more thing that you can try.

http://winrollup.com/enable-network-discovery-in-windows-10-creator-edition-without-using-the-netsh-command-in-powershell

I consolidated the commands from that web site. Run Powershell_ISE as an administrator, and paste these commands into a script window and run it. Do this on the machines that can't see each other.

Get-Service  -name "UPnP Device Host" | Set-Service -StartupType Automatic  
Get-Service  -name "Function Discovery Resource Publication" | Set-Service -StartupType Automatic  
Get-Service  -name "Function Discovery Provider Host" | Set-Service -StartupType Automatic  
Get-Service  -name "SSDP Discovery" | Set-Service -StartupType Automatic  
  
   
Get-Service  -name "DNS Client" | Start-Service  
Get-Service  -name "UPnP Device Host" | Start-Service  
Get-Service  -name "Function Discovery Resource Publication" | Start-Service  
Get-Service  -name "Function Discovery Provider Host" | Start-Service   
Get-Service  -name "SSDP Discovery" | Start-Service  
  
Set-NetConnectionProfile -NetworkCategory Private -PassThru  
Get-NetFirewallRule -DisplayGroup 'Network Discovery'|Set-NetFirewallRule -Profile 'Private, Domain' -Enabled true -PassThru|select Name,DisplayName,Enabled,Profile|ft -a  

Then in explorer open up Network and press F5 to refresh. See if your PC's show up then.

Answer 2

Thank you, that helps.

I was never using DHCP

Yes, you are using DHCP. The output from Ipconfig /all shows:

DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : Yes

I don't know what your router is doing.

C:\WINDOWS\system32>nslookup 192.168.1.108
Server: 192-168-1-1.tpgi.com.au
Address: 192.168.1.1

Name: 192-168-1-108.tpgi.com.au
Address: 192.168.1.108

If you have "Register this connection's addresses in DNS" checked then the IP address should NOT resolve to 192-168-1-108.tpgi.com.au, it should resolve to the PC name.

You are not alone. I found another user with the same problem. Unfortunately, no one has replied to his query.

https://community.tpg.com.au/t5/Modems-and-Devices/Can-the-TP-Link-Archer-VR1600v-router-be-used-as-local-DNS/td-p/76292

I would recommend contacting your ISP and ask for help configuring your router. Reference that other users question. Ask them how to configure your router to resolve the IP to the local PC name.

Answer 3

Thanks a lot, MotoX80! With your help, I found what DNS settings I need to set - https://community.tpg.com.au/t5/Modems-and-Devices/How-to-change-dns-server/td-p/5966. On my home network, I can now access from any computer to any other, both by names and by IP addresses. Some ambiguities remained: 1) Why earlier in some places I could address another computer by name. 2) Why the nslookup command now looks like this:
C:\WINDOWS\system32>nslookup
Default Server: one.one.one.one
Address: 1.1.1.1

NATHA-PC

Server: one.one.one.one
Address: 1.1.1.1
*** one.one.one.one can't find NATHA-PC: Non-existent domain

ANN-14-19

Server: one.one.one.one
Address: 1.1.1.1
*** one.one.one.one can't find ANN-14-19: Non-existent domain

DESKTOP-EBP1DDA

Server: one.one.one.one
Address: 1.1.1.1
*** one.one.one.one can't find DESKTOP-EBP1DDA: Non-existent domain

exit

I would be glad if you can explain it.

Answer 4

I'm not sure that I can explain it, but I'll take a shot based on my understanding. My experience is mainly with servers which had fixed IP addresses. We did not use DHCP because our security requirements mandated that we firewall all systems and then define specific addresses and ports which could be accessed. The IP of a server never changed. Whereas the IP of any machine on my home network could change every time I boot it.

So... When you boot up a PC, it looks to see what it's network config is. If it's DHCP it sends out a network broadcast that says "can I please have an IP address, and I would like to be registered in DNS so that other PC's can find me". The router responds with "yes, you may have 192.168.1.4 and here are the settings that you need to configure".

So if you look at the command prompt image that I posted, the PC named TEST10B got address 192.168.1.4 and any other PC on my network gets that address returned as the answer to "where is TEST10B?". And "who is 192.168.1.4" gets TEST10B as an answer. For whatever reason my router also uses the .HOME suffix. I don't know why.

When a PC on the network wants to access Yahoo.com it queries the DNS server to get it's IP address. On a home network, the router is the DNS server and it doesn't know anything about Yahoo.com. So it has to query the DNS servers out on the internet to find Yahoo's IP address.

So from the info you posted yesterday, when a PC asks "who is 192.168.1.100?" the answer of "192-168-1-100.tpgi.com.au" is wrong. It looks like your router treated the query like it ignored local addresses and names and forwarded the request to the tpgi.com.au DNS servers on the internet.

This explains what 1.1.1.1 is.

https://www.cloudflare.com/learning/dns/what-is-1.1.1.1/

192-168-1-1.tpgi.com.au can't find DESKTOP-EBP1DDA: Non-existent domain
one.one.one.one can't find DESKTOP-EBP1DDA: Non-existent domain

Neither DNS server is finding your local names. If you ran that Powershell code, then Network Discovery must now be working.

If you didn't run that script, then I can't explain it. Did you reboot any of the pc's? "nslookup DESKTOP-EBP1DDA" should return a valid address. But if you have changed the DHCP configuration to tell the PC's to "use 1.1.1.1 as your DNS server", then you will never resolve the DESKTOP-EBP1DDA name via DNS.