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RT-AC3100 on 3.0.0.4.386_41700 - Cannot access wireless clients by hostname on LAN

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GnatGoSplat

Occasional Visitor
My RT-AC3100 was working perfectly on one of the 385 builds, didn't make note of which one, but probably the last one. I noticed there was a newer firmware version, so I let the router update like I have so many times before with no issues. My router updated to 3.0.0.4.386_41700 and now I cannot access wireless clients by hostnames on my LAN. I did do a full factory reset and manually (painfully) reconfigured everything from a fresh start, which did NOT fix the issue.

All my machines are on Windows default networking settings. 3 run Windows 10 20H2.
  • Computer1 - Wired - Can access Computer2 via hostname (ping, access Windows shares, RDP, all works). Cannot access Computer3 or Computer4 with hostname.
  • Computer2 - Wired - Can access Computer1 via hostname (ping, access Windows shares, RDP, all works). Cannot access Computer3 or Computer4 with hostname.
  • Computer3 (Windows Server 2019) - Wifi - Can access Computer1 and Computer2 via hostname (ping, access Windows shares, RDP, all works). Cannot access Computer4 with hostname.
  • Computer4 - Wifi - Can access Computer1 and Computer2 via hostname (ping, access Windows shares, RDP, all works). Cannot access Computer4 with hostname.
If I reboot the router, I can access the Wifi computers with hostname for a few minutes, then it stops working. I don't know exactly how many minutes it will work for, but probably less than 15-minutes.
Wired computers can access the wifi computers via RDP, network share, and ping if I append a period (.) to the end of the hostname. From what I've read, this means it's failing NetBIOS or WINS name resolutions.
I've tried all number of ipconfig /flushdns, ipconfig /renew, on all the machines. I've tried rebooting them all. ipconfig /all looks no different between any machines.
Running "nbtstat -a <ipaddr>" from a wired machine does return the NetBIOS machine name in the "NetBIOS Remote Machine Name Table".
As mentioned before, factory reset was attempted and didn't help.

Any ideas? I haven't tried downgrading back to 385, but I will later.
 
Wired computers can access the wifi computers via RDP, network share, and ping if I append a period (.) to the end of the hostname.
Enter your domain name under LAN - DHCP Server. If you don't have one currently use something like home.lan and then reboot all your clients to pick up the change.
 
Enter your domain name under LAN - DHCP Server. If you don't have one currently use something like home.lan and then reboot all your clients to pick up the change.
I don't have a domain, but I did try that with 1-word and thought it worked, but it turned out it was just doing the thing where it works for a few minutes then quits. Does 2 words with period in-between make any difference? I will try that later this evening.
 
Does 2 words with period in-between make any difference?
It shouldn't make any difference, but don't use local.

Also, don't connect to guest WiFi SSID #1 on either 2.4 or 5 GHz as that now behaves differently which can cause problems.

Are all your computers configured as DHCP clients or are you manually configuring some of their network parameters?

Are you running a DHCP or DNS server on Computer3?
 
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I don't have guest Wifi enabled, both my wifi machines are on 5GHz.

All the computers are configured as DHCP clients. I have reserved fixed IPs for Computer1 and Computer3 in the router's "DHCP Server" tab. Nothing is configured manually on the machines themselves.

Computer3 isn't doing anything right now other than acting as a file server, no DHCP or DNS servers running on it. Pretty much a clean install (just clean-installed it about 2-weeks ago).
 
Strange. When you have the problem, from a PC that has the problem (e.g. computer4) can you run these two commands (adjust for your host name and domain name) and compare the output:

ping computer3

ping computer3.home.lan

I'm wondering whether there's another device on the network that has the same NetBIOS name. IIRC NetBIOS name resolution takes precedence over unqualified DNS names, and NetBIOS names can take from 1 to 15 minutes to spread throughout the network after a reboot.
 
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I put the same 1-word domain back into the domain name box, and this time instead of rebooting everything within seconds of each other, I shut everything completely down for a few minutes. It worked immediately, as expected, but I checked back 2-hours later and all still working! I think the problem is fixed. I'm guessing when I rebooted everything before, the PCs may have rebooted much quicker than the router and the reboots ended up staggered instead of simultaneous.

Thanks for all the help, @ColinTaylor !
 

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