Hi all,

I am still building my home network, and want it o be able to connect to different computers by:

\\pc-name

We have 2 types of computers:
Computers in the workgroup WORKGROUP (2 debian, 1 vista)
Computers in the domain TUE (required by our university) (3 vista, 2 xp)

Within the workgroup, I can call pc's by their name, but this is not possible by the pc's in the domain.

I can however always do \\ip and the 2 debians have a samba server running, which is available through \\ip (and \\name, for the computers in the workgroup).

Does anybody knows the answer?

Best regards,

Geert

To confirm...

Do you have static IP addesses (or DHCP reservations) for all the machines?

Do you have a DNS server?

If you don't have (and don't want to set-up) a DNS server you would need to make manual entries into the hosts file of each machine.

on Linux, this is generally /etc/hosts

on Windows XP the hosts file is c:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts

windows may have relocated this on Vista, I don't know.

Example hosts file:

Hi, I am not sure.

I know about the hosts file, but I don't want to edit the hosts file everytime someone comes living into the house (students house).
I don't mind setting up a DNS-server, if it is not too complicated
I don't know if I have static IP adresses. From experience I know that my web server has changed it's IP adress once, when both router and PC where down.

So what is your verdict? What is the best solution for my problem?

Best regards,

Geert

Your router is almost certainly acting as a DHCP server for the machines on your network, and therefore you probably do not currently have static IP addresses for your machines.

First, I would see if your router configuration allows for DHCP reservations. On my Netgear this is done on the "LAN IP Setup" under "Advanced".

You will need to know the MAC addresses of the network interface that will attach to the LAN, and assign a unique IP address in the network range for each MAC address.

To find out what the MAC address is...

In Vista,

1. open the Network and Sharing Center from Control Panel
2. click view status the relevant network interface
3. click Details
4. MAC address is shown as Physical Address

In Windows XP,

1. open the Network and Internet Connections from Control Panel
2. click Network Connections
3. right-click on the relevant network interface
4. click Status
5. click Details on the Support tab
6. MAC address is shown as Physical Address

Alternatively type (from the cmd prompt):
In Linux, type (from a console/terminal):
MAC address is shown as HWAddr

I have a wireless-G Broadbans router of Linksys.

This is what I found:

DHCP Server: Enable
Starting IP Address: 192.168.1.100
Maximum Number of DHCP Users: 50
Client Lease Time: 0 minutes (0 means one day)
Static DNS 1: . . .
Static DNS 2: . . .
Static DNS 3: . . .
WINS: . . .

Further I can edit internet access policies and add/remove a list of pc's under "internet access". At the moment all internet access policies are disabled.

I am not sure what to do next...

If you do not have an option to configure "DHCP Reservations" on your Router, then you cannot guarantee that the machines will be given the same IP address each time they connect.

Your alternative would be to turn off DHCP on the router, and configure a Linux machine as a DHCP server (this would need to be permanently on and have a static IP address).

You could use the same machine to configure DNS, both of these tasks are quite involved but there is plenty of documentation around.

A quick google search returned the following:
http://www.linuxhomenetworking.com/w...he_DHCP_Server

http://www.aboutdebian.com/dns.htm