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I have a D-Link DGL-4500 router. One of the settings is "Local Domain Name," which I have set to local (see screenshot).

What I expect is for me to be able to hit my computers via name, e.g. m6.local should resolve to one of my computers; but this isn't happening.

I know that I can do this via hosts file, but it would be neat if I could do it via the router... plus I have devices like an iPad that don't let you edit the hosts file.

Am I misunderstanding this router feature or am I doing something wrong?

Image from router

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You're mistaken. It's going to probably be local.local now. Try m6.local.local to test it (or just m6). –  Randolph West Feb 21 '11 at 5:05
doesn't seem to be working for me –  Giovanni Galbo Feb 21 '11 at 5:13
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3 Answers

"Local Domain Name" refers to the domain name that the DNS resolver on the client will try in order to find a DNS entry; it does not create a DNS entry on the DNS server. If you have entries in an existing DNS server for "foo.lan" and "bar.lan" then a Local Domain Name of "lan" would let you resolve them using "foo" and "bar" respectively.

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Never use 'local' as a selfdefined domain, because its a RFC reserved name like 'localhost'.

My dlink 615 automatically maintains the local domain 'local', even if this field is empty. i think most routers should support .local

If your computers OS doesnt support DDNS to tell the router the computers , then you will need to fill the DHCP Reservations section at the bottom of the page of your routers screenshot. This is actually a mapping of MAC adressses to ip adresses and DNS adresses (this is actually a DNS entry). So when a local computer calls DHCP of your router and the router recognizes the MAC of the computer as an entry of this list, it will assign the mentioned IP and DNS name.

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Actually, most routers don't support "local" as such; instead, the network stack on each computer catches it and uses multicast DNS/zeroconf/Bonjour/etc. –  geekosaur Mar 7 '11 at 21:38
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The "local domain name" is used for the router to provide normal DNS service. For example, on mine it's set to kf8nh.com so machines on my network are all identifiable as foo.kf8nh.com where foo comes from the DHCP client ID or static DHCP reservations. If you set (as DHCP normally will) the router as your DNS server, hostnames like that should work; if you also then set the domain name or search path on your computers to the same value then you can use those names without the domain. (I don't know why many/most(?) routers don't send that with the other DHCP options.)

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