Question: Here's the story.

There's a local sharepoint server called brksharepoint at ip address 10.2.1.40.

I had set up my computer to use google's dns because I found it to be more reliable than my local isp.

Using an app that had recently been set up I was getting 401 errors, I couldn't figure out why as I was logged into the local domain and it should have 'just worked'.

Browsing to the ip address "10.2.1.40" worked (however it prompted me for my user credentuals when I am logged into the local domain) and browsing to the computer name brksharepoint in ie 10 failed with a 404.

I then edited my hosts file to resolve to the correct ip address as I thought this was the problem - this fixed nothing.

Here's where it gets weird.

I found I could ping brksharepoint (with a wiped hosts file), and tried browsing with chrome... this worked, where ie would fail.

I then turned off google's dns and used my local gateway instead - magically this fixed everything.

What's going on here? Can I use google dns if I want to use this sharepoint server?

Thanks for any ideas - more curious than anything.

Answer: 
Can you run a local DNS server, on your router perhaps? This way you could run a lightweight client like dnsmasq to resolve local names before requesting it from Google.

What I suspect is happening is your computer tries to resolve `brksharepoint` with Google but this of course isn't a real name, so it returns an incorrect IP address (one of the standard 'name not found' webserver) or lookup failure.
**There's multiple points where Naming takes place.**

Home routers automatically updates its own local DNS tables upon registration of DHCP hosts. Since you're not using your dhcp server and only using google, you cannot resolve these names. Your machine can and will also check NetBios. NetBIOS in Windows will communicate SMB names when it searches for SMB peers on the network to propagate the "network" list. Lastly is your computers own hosts file!

**SOME routers, allow you to edit the routers DNS Table...**

One option, you can setup a local DNS Server on your Sharepoint server. Then make your machine point to that DNS Server and set your Forwarders to point to Google. 

You can also setup your router to use Google's DNS Servers instead of providing DNS given by your ISP's WAN DHCP. Then set your machine to point back at the router for DNS or back to Auto assuming your router is providing DHCP addressing.

***If it's one-off situations like this though, I just put the desired hostname into my hosts file...***

```
c:\drivers\system32\drivers\etc\hosts #windows
/etc/hosts #linux

```

Syntax/Formatting

```
127.0.0.1     localhost              #your browser will resolve this
192.168.0.48  brksharepoint          #your browser will resolve this
192.168.0.48  www.brksharepoint.com  #your browser will resolve this

```