Local host name resolution problem.

[johnlee43]

Hi all Fortinet experts,

I recently installed FG100E with Firmware V6.0.3build0200.

We are running local network with Windows stations and servers.

Before we switch to Fortigate firewall,  we could access local server on the web browser like http://webserver:8080.  The name resolution for the host name “webserver” was done by MS NetBIOS.  After switching to Fortigate firewall, we can no longer access the local hosts by the name any more.

Please help me to fix this problem.

[Toshi_Esumi]

You must have changed DHCP server to the FG100E from a previous router or something else. You need to restore the previous DHCP server config especially DNS server IPs providing to the windows machines. It must be the IP of one of those windows servers to get those names resolved as it was before.

[johnlee43]

Thank you Toshi,

We set up DHCP server to Internal Network interface of FG100E and DNS setting was obtained from system default setting, which is FortiGuard DNS servers.  We did not used any internal name resolution servers like Winserver at all.

[tanr]

Is the local server on the same subnet as the client trying to access it? 

IIRC, if it's on a different subnet you need to set up NetBIOS forwarding to the WINS server otherwise the broadcast request won't go through.  This was a couple years back with 5.4, though, so don't know if 6.0 handles it differently.

Docs at https://help.fortinet.com/fos50hlp/54/Content/FortiOS/fortigate-networking-54/Interfaces/VLANs/NetBI....

[johnlee43]

The server we are trying to connect is on the same subnet as the clients.

[julienlux]

I think you need to configure a DNS Server on the Fortigate itself:

https://help.fortinet.com/fos50hlp/54/Content/FortiOS/fortigate-networking-54/DNS%20Services/DNS%20S...

But i'm not sure this option is available on 100E because you don't have a disk.