Buggish: Unable to access MS Network Folder (IP versus HostName)

Problem (rare)

I am able to some times get to the machine's base share folders but unable to access sub-folders. I have share permissions and local machine permissions on the network machine. This seemed random because I was able to connect to other shares with IP address and hostnames. I have a different login to access the network folders than the system that I am working from.

Solution (workaround)

Be consistent with the address to the network folder. If logged in with IP address (\\10.10.10.10), continue to use IP address. If logged in with hostname (\\hostname), continue to use hostname. If you logged in with IP, then you may get access issue when using hostname. Also the same vice-versa. I was able to replicate this every time.

(Edit: 6/12/2021) Consistency is key. Using simple hostname or the fully qualified hostname (e.g. \\hostname vs \\hostname.domain.local) will also have the same issue. The trickier part to this is that net use will see these are the same and will not allow the user to provide login for both \\hostname and \\hostname.domain.local. This makes it very hard to switch. I had an post on how to remote net use but it does not work. My only solution is to reboot the system each time this needs to be corrected.

Background

We moved from one cloud platform to another. Before the group used IP addresses to connect to network folders. After the migration, we started to use hostnames. The infrastructure team also created a tunnel between the two cloud platforms. The tunnel was only accessible with IP.

When on the new system, I was still switching between IP and hostname depending on where I was copying the server address from. So I will oftentimes switch between the two depending which was readily available for me.

I do not think many people will face this problem as most people will be consistent with the address. The last oddity was that I can ping the hostname and resolves to the same IP but for some reason the destination folder does not recognize that as the same login. (I mean, I can probably guess why this is happening from the problem but not sure why it was designed this way.)

Reference

https://douglastclee.blogspot.com/2021/10/buggish-unable-to-access-ms-network.html (added 2021-10-06)