Internal DNS via router

Here's the situation:

I have a modem and a router, connected to each other. The router has 4 ports and a WAN port, along with wireless capability.

I'd like to be able to access nodes on my LAN by name. DNS seems like the best solution for this.

Can I set one of the nodes on the LAN to act as a DNS server, have the router query *that* PC for DNS lookups, and have that PC query the modem if it doesn't succeed?

The idea being that everything connects to the router, and when a node asks for google.com for example, it queries the internal DNS server, which in turn queries the modem. Whereas for local nodes, it'll just end at the local DNS server.

Or can I just use primary and secondary DNS on the router for this purpose?
(eg: set primary to local, secondary to internet)

Re: "The idea being that everything connects to the router, and when a node asks for google.com for example, it queries the internal DNS server, which in turn queries the modem. Whereas for local nodes, it'll just end at the local DNS server. "

Yes, that will work fine.

Hi.
If I've read you right....
I think you're over complicating things. If all your lan PCs get their address from the router the router will automaticlly route local traffic( you need to make sure that a pc only gets an ip from the router and not a hostname as wel to route by name)l. If you have set up your lan with static IPs then you need to add all the PCs to the hosts file.
Cheers
Jon

...That's precisely what I'm trying to avoid having to do (use hosts file.)

I use something similar

* I use a router that issues an IP address to all of the PC's, using DHCP. The router takes the PC's name and stores them into the ROUTERS DNS list. The PC's use the Router as the DNS server and the default gateway.

this allows the pc's to talk to each other using their internal pc names etc..

* The Router then has as its default route, the ADSL modem, and its DNS server is also the ADSL modem. Thus the PC => Router => modem => Internet for DNS & the traffic.

You can use a PC on your local network as a DNS server, but this would have to be running some form of DNS software (e.g. Windows server DNS or Unix DNS). You would then get your local pc's to use the local pc as the DNS server.