I use my Duo v1 to run Backup on several desktops at home. Name resolution has been hit-or-miss over the years, and before I upgrade to a x86 product I would like to see if I can make this old box perform as it should. I have given the Duo a fixed IP. It is acting as a WINS server and all the desktop adapters have been given the Duo's IP as the WINS server. The Duo has been given my router/firewall's IP as the default gateway. The Duo set not to be a DHCP server because the router/firewall is. I have not given the Duo DNS entries as it should inherit these from my router/firewall, which is inheriting them from my ISP. I am running Windows 7 on all my desktops. Sharing and network discovery work perfectly among all the desktops and they can all see and access shares on the Duo perfectly. So,
Why is the Duo only able to resolve the name of one of my desktops (the one I use the most)? Why is the Duo unable to access the netgear server to get firmware images? Why does the Duo complain about getting a bad IP when I try to make it get a dynamic IP (and, for that matter, why don't I see it asking the router/firewall DHCP server for an IP)?
Stephen, Thanks for the feedback. I agree it behaives like a subnet mask problem, so I double checked it was correct. I have all my wired equipment on 192.168.168.[1-160] with a 255.255.255.0 subnet mask. The DCHP server is handing out the range 1-140 and the Duo is currrently static 192.168.168.150 with a 255.255.255.0 sunbnet mask. If I try telling the Duo to get an IPv4 assignment using DHCP(under Network->Interfaces) it grays out the subnet mask so I'm assuming it gets the mask from the DHCP server. Any further thoughts? I could try reconfiguring everything without WINS if you think that could be causing the problem. -Mark
I disabled WINS everywere...didn't help. I did get the Duo to accept a dynamic IP by ignoring the error message and doing a restart. So I'm able to confirm everyting is on the same subnet. I suspect I have a network setting problem, but the Duo isn't giving me any help in diagnosing a problem that exists for the Duo, but not the for any other device on the network. I am still baffled!
After a great deal of experimenting I can offer the following results and reflections on my problem which still exists, and still exists for my new NV+ v2. Stephen, unlike you, I need a wins server because my DHCP server, which is my router/firewall/default gateway, does not keep track of names. So I now have the ReadyNas Duo v1 running as a WINS server, and have configured the ethernet adapter on all my computers to reflect that. By the way, this requires giving the Duo a fixed IP since the apapter settings require an IP address for the WINS server (under the TCP/IP properties). Unfortunately, I strongly suspect that the Duo firmware is written so that whenever the Duo is configured to use a static IP it also requires static DNS I.P. entries. Because I am a home user I do not have static DNSes--they are passed to my router from my ISP. I believe that the subnet settings of my network devices are correct (255.255.255.0). One problem I can pinpoint is that while Windows can successfully create a network map of all devices on my network, pinging some of these same devices on my network returns completely different IP addresses that are unreachable by the ping command. For example, right now if I hover over my new NV+ in a win 7 network map window, the IP adderess 192.168.168.151 is displayed--as one would expect since I configured it with that static IP. However pinging the NV+ by name returns 204.232.137.207, and fails to connect. I'm baffeled that these are different! Clearly Windows is using a different name resolution procedure than ping (or nbtstat for that matter). Both of my NASes must be using the same name resolution process as ping which would explain why my backup jobs are failing. As allways, I am most appreciative for any advice or suggestions since I am really in a bind.
Is 204.232.137.207 your router's external address?
This sounds like a DNS problem of some sort.
According to www.whatsmyip.org it is not. All of my devices have the DNS servers that have been handed out by my ISP.
When I inspect the NBT cache on my Duo (which is acting as my WINS server, it only has a few devices listed, some with the correct IPs and some with clearly incorrect IPs. Also there are always a few devices missing from the table--usually a computer or two. This leads me to believe that the Duo is failing at its job as a WINS server. But I'm not sure how to test this hypothesis. I also don't understand why my Duo and NV+ use a different name resolution process than my win 7 machines use. For that matter, do you know what process the NASes use for name resolution? The only reason I'm running WINS is because I assumed they needed it, but maybe that is mistaken.
When they are looking up a host, the Readynas systems use DNS. They also advertise a NetBios host name. This is normal Linux behavior.
Windows systems that are accessing the NAS can either find the NetBios or DNS name (and also WINS)
If WINS is seeing bad IP addresses, then something is clearly wrong. This might be a NV+ problem, but it is also possible that the WINS clients are not registering correctly.
Since you really don't know why you need the WINS service, I suggest you turn it off for now.
Thank you for the advice. I turned off WINS. Ironically I was only running it to try to help the NAS resolve computer names. This helped stabilize things a bit. Also, switching both the Duo and NV+ to take a DHCP-given IP address straightened out some more funky behavior (despite the Duo's warning about getting a bad IP, it is fine). So now my network is perfectly stable. And backups were working fine so long as I used IP addresses instead of names for a while, until I expanded the NV+ with another drive. Now backups don't work at all... Otherwise everything looks fine. Even Photos II works. But no backups...very disappointing. To be clear, I have absolutely no problem resolving the names of the NASes. It's the NASes that can't resolve the computer names.
Yes, I ran into the IP address thing a few weeks ago myself. My old Actiontec allowed me to add the NAS names into into its DNS proxy, which allowed the NASes to find each other by name. My current Netgear router doesn't have that feature, so I had to switch to using IP addressed. The addresses are reserved in the router, so they won't change. But I would rather use names than IP addresses.
My NASes don't need to resolve the computer names though (I don't use frontview backup for the PCs, instead I use Acronis on the PCs, which push to the NAS).
Expanding the RAID array shouldn't break backups though - that sounds like a different issue. Maybe the IP address of the NAS changed?
