Switch to map hostnames with local IPs automatically

[nautatva]

Scenario

I have some devices visible on network. DNS lookup gives bunch of information including hostname and IP address of each device.

Current behavior vs required behavior

• Current:
  • We manually enter the device to hostname mapping in hosts and use the file
• Task:
  • Automatically make an FQDN out of the device hostname (perhaps added a .local at the end)

Benefits

This will eliminate the effort to manually map the entries.

Example

LAN Scan

• Lenovo-PC --> 192.168.43.5
• HP --> 192.168.43.18

Mappings

• Lenovo-pc.local --> 192.168.43.5
• hp.local --> 192.168.43.18 (Not case sensitive)

Proof of concept

• Every hostname on a network must be unique. This makes it possible to map every hostname with an IP without any problems.
• I know this is programmatically possible because Net analyzer and many other apps on Google play already do a LAN scan and print this information to screen. What we need to do here is take this information, append a suffix (like .local) and make a dynamic hosts out of it.

Challenges

Devices can come into the network at any point of time. Auto-refreshing the hosts file can be a bit of challenge (perhaps battery consuming as well?). Devices moving out of network should not be a problem as anything connecting will automatically give a timeout.