How to find computers by hostnames on a dhcp network

Question

I have setup a lan under a router. The network is modeled after the MVC pattern. All devices respect a name convention. My controller computer dynamically figures other computers by searching for hostnames. I have set up 2 view computers with compilers, interpreters etc., I access them by cvs, both are running freebsd. These two computers respect the nameing convention of vw[n]. I also have a laptop as a portable database, running XP(iis, sql), it respects db[n]. My controller is also a freebsd(eclipse as IDE), named cr.

Because I use dhcp every time I receive new ips for my computers. On my router page at DHCP Leased List I see my computers with name, mac, address.

The problem is that when I want to access my computers by using hostname, I can not find them. I figure this is a dns problem. I have no experience setting networks so please help.

Thank you

Answer 1

Some things to check:

• Are all your machines on the same domain?
• Are all your machines on the same IP schema?
• Are all your machines on the same subnet?
• Does one of the XP machines have the computer browser service enabled? There is a "master browser" on each network that communicates the PC names to the rest of the network. They will determine amongst themselves which is the master normally, but one of them needs to be running it.
• Do the PC names on the network match the actual names you assigned? You can have a PC named PC123 that shows up as "Joe's PC" on the network list.
• Do they have network sharing enabled? If you don't set any drives or folders to be shared, they won't be accessible from the network.