TDS Cable Search: Code 0 Unknown host

Question

When I try to use my TDS Telecome cable box to search the TV guide, it has an error: Code 0 which is says is an unknown host.

This started happening after I updated some settings on my TDS router, including changing the LAN IP DNS servers to use a DNS server running on my computer (dnsmasq). Why is this happening, and how can I fix it?

Answer 1

The cable box is setup to query a server that is not in public DNS. Only the TDS dns servers are set up to answer this query. Changing the LAN IP DNS server in the router settings to something other than the TDS DNS servers will break functionality on the TDS cables boxes.

Solution 1: Put back the default TDS settings

After doing so, you will have to reboot both the router and the cable box to make sure the settings take effect.

Solution 2: Configure your own DNS server to use TDS DNS servers upstream

I'm using dnsmasq running on a local server to add a variety of local host names. On my home network, I'd like printer.example.com to resolve to the IP address of my printer. The TDS router has some functionality for this, but it is limited to 19 character host names. The host names I want to add are up to 24 characters long. I brought up dnsmasq on my local server and set the router to tell clients to use it for DNS. I had configured dnsmasq to use Google's 8.8.8.8 DNS server upstream. Switching this upstream DNS server to the TDS DNS server solves the problem.

The TDS DNS servers can be found on the home page of the router at http://192.168.0.1:

After configuring dnsmasq to use these servers upstream, the cable started working again. I can see in the dnsmasq logs that the cable box is requesting the weird internal DNS entries it expects and getting an appropriate answer:

dnsmasq[25573]: query[A] ftbgwimfapplb1.br.iptv.tds.internal from 192.168.1.5
dnsmasq[25573]: forwarded ftbgwimfapplb1.br.iptv.tds.internal to 216.165.129.158
dnsmasq[25573]: reply ftbgwimfapplb1.br.iptv.tds.internal is 184.61.182.200