Thanks for the reply, I'm sorry that I was not clear in my explanation.
What I'm looking for is the ability for the Linux appliance box to report its hostname properly to the network, such as is done in Windows "network neighborhood", where the machines are listed by name.
In the wireless routers we've tested, Linksys WRGT54 and Netgear, you can view the DHCP clients table visually. It shows hostnames and IP addresses and MAC addresses for each machine in the wireless network.
here is what it looks like:
http://www.norcalblogs.com/watts/per...DHCP_table.png
This dialog shown above is created in the Linksys router, which is also a Linux appliance.
Note that there are two entries for hostnames that are 192.168.2.1 which is also the gateway address. These are the Linux appliances we are building. There's another entry that is blank, and thats another commercial linux based appliance, and the others that have real names are Windows machines.
I'm trying to get our Linux appliances to have the hostnames show up properly so that the end user can more easily locate where the devices get assigned via DHCP so that they can direct our Windows based control client to that IP address. The appliances are likely to be far removed from where the end user controls them, and probably mounted in inaccessible places, so we are looking for a convenient way to discover where they have been IP'd to, especially if the network changes assignments due to power outage.
Hopefully we can then create an automated method in our Windows client to keep track of them so that login connection can be easily maintained. I realize the simple solution is to run fixed IP addresses on the Wireless LAN, but that may not be practical in all installs.