NSLookup says Non-Existent domain, but Ping works fine. (Discovered during Wireguard setup)

[TheGr8McCranni]

I was setting up a wireguard server to access my servers remotely, and when I started to work on local hostname resolution, only some of the ones that I had configured functioned at all. I set the wireguard DNS to my home router to simplify the process, and came to the conclusion that that portion of the setup was functional, as I could still use the internet and a few of my hostname translations worked, even through the VPN. In all of my testing, this issue persists without the VPN, leading me to believe that the VPN wasn't the problem, it was something else on the network.

 

At this point I hopped off of the VPN, pulled up my router's "Devices" page to check every device on my network with NSLOOKUP and discovered that only half or so of them were recognized, the other half spat out the error "[home router] can't find [ip]: Non-existent domain. The ones that were recognized were the same ones that successfully resolved through the VPN. I found this to be weird, as right after each test I was still able to ping every device successfully. I initially thought this may be a DHCP error, but some of the hostnames that worked were outside of my DHCP reservation, and some of the ones that didn't work were inside of it. I did check if I had two DHCP servers just incase, but when I ran  'ipconfig /all | find /i “DHCP Server”' only my home router showed up. I ran 'ipconfig /all | find /i “DNS Server”' and once again, just my home router. I repeated this on three different computers, Linux, Mac, and Windows.

 

As a networking beginner, I have no idea what to look for next, so any help would be greatly appreciated!

 

[EDIT]: After some messing and some DNS Host Mapping in my router, all of my servers appear, however I am now presented with "Your Internet Access is Blocked" whenever connecting to any of them through the wireguard server. One step forward, two steps back it seems

Edited May 14, 2022 by TheGr8McCranni
Clarification, new information

[Bombastinator]

So it seems there is a major issue with your home router.  Router is one of those words that winds up having multiple meanings though because the term seems to be applied to anything with a router in it. Specificity may be useful here.

[TheGr8McCranni]

On 5/14/2022 at 12:05 AM, Bombastinator said:

So it seems there is a major issue with your home router.  Router is one of those words that winds up having multiple meanings though because the term seems to be applied to anything with a router in it. Specificity may be useful here.

Like I said, I’m relatively new to this kind of stuff, so I apologize for not knowing what details to give, but I’ll try my best!

I have the included router from my ISP, a Calix GigaSpire. 
In the routers interface I was able to do some DNS host mapping and was able to get the NXDomain error fixed, but now when connecting through the WireGuard server, all of my local servers say “Your internet access is blocked” when trying to connect. I am still able to connect to the internet through the VPN, however, it’s only my local servers that have the issue.

[Bombastinator]

2 hours ago, TheGr8McCranni said:

Like I said, I’m relatively new to this kind of stuff, so I apologize for not knowing what details to give, but I’ll try my best!

I have the included router from my ISP, a Calix GigaSpire. 
In the routers interface I was able to do some DNS host mapping and was able to get the NXDomain error fixed, but now when connecting through the WireGuard server, all of my local servers say “Your internet access is blocked” when trying to connect. I am still able to connect to the internet through the VPN, however, it’s only my local servers that have the issue.

No worries.  This is a great place to learn useful random stuff.