Windows DHCP client and DNS suffix search list (option 119)

I'm constraining my search to Microsoft OS's tonight, for lack of energy. >smile<

Finding a concise list of the DHCP options supported by various Microsoft operating systems has proven to be difficult. The following article shows as being revised in 2006, and references Windows XP in the article text, but claims to only apply up to Windows NT 4.0.

• https://jeffpar.github.io/kbarchive/kb/121/Q121005/ (formerly http://support.microsoft.com/kb/121005)

Based on this article, it doesn't appear that any version of Windows referenced in that article supports option 119. I'm seeing postings that seem to indicate that Windows Server 2003 and 2008 do not support option 119, either.

This article indicates that DHCP option 119 doesn't work on Windows 2000 - Windows Server 2003:

• http://support.microsoft.com/kb/275553

I'll try my Windows 7-based laptop computer in a moment and drop an edit in here with my findings.

After reading this I had a look at a Ubuntu 8.10 installation I've just finished on Virtualbox. resolve.conf contains:

# Generated by NetworkManager
domain ourdomain.local
search ourdomain.local
nameserver 192.168.0.6
nameserver 192.168.0.7

As a result, it handles lookups just fine and I can reach any machine with either the host name or the FQDN. My MacBook also handles lookups just fine, both at work and at home, but I'm unable to check its resolve.conf right now (the screen is broken). Neither the work network (Windows DHCP) nor my home network (Linux DHCP) have option 119. In fact both pass the domain name only as option 15.

The only issue I had getting this to work was that Linux and Mac didn't like it when my home network used a single word domain name. Adding ".local" to the end of it is the only change I had to make.