Small (SoHo) LAN, how to manage local DNS etc.?

[Chris Green]

On Tue, Oct 09, 2012 at 10:35:50AM -0600, compdoc wrote:
> > So how should one manage this sort of a system?  I can run DHCP on the 
> > NAT router but that doesn't provide DNS for the LAN so I don't get 
> > names for my systems.
> 
> There are firewall distros that provide excellent dhcp, and local dns naming
> services. I can ping any PC on my lan by using its simple name. And I run
> one in a virtual machine on a fileserver so it doesn't require a dedicated
> computer. 
> 
I was wondering about that approach, running a virtual machine to
provide DHCP/DNS, any pointers to Howtos?  

> There are also dhcp and dns services you can install on any PC on your lan.
> I especially like Windows Server running in a VM for this, just because of
> the great gui, but any linux/bsd/whatever based machine can do this as well.
> It basically comes down to a machine that's running 24/7 on your lan. 
> 
Yes, but the issue now is that Ubuntu 12.04 is *already* running dsnmasq
so running another dnsmasq isn't too clever.


> And there must be some soho routers that can provide the same services.
> Although it a lot of work, there are routers that can have a distro burned
> to its rom to replace its OS with a *nix based OS like openwrt.
> 
As I've explained that's really where my problem comes from, my Draytek
Vigor *doesn't* provide local DNS.

-- 
Chris Green