[Beds] Tonights meeting

[Lee Larcombe]

Hi

Unfortunately I can't make it tonight. If anyone turns up, perhaps you could
come up with an answer to my question:

I have got two machines networked together via a switch. One is a MacOS
700Mhz G3 iBook with a 100mbps network card, the other a dual PIII 700Mhz
ubuntu running desktop with a 10mbps network card.

The ip addresses are 192.168.55.1 (iBook) and 192.168.55.2 (desktop). The
subnet is 255.255.255.0. The switch is part of a firewall device which has
the internal ip 192.168.55.50 and acts as a gateway to another LAN with the
external ip 138.250.128.125 - subnet 255.255.224.0. DNS services are
provided on that LAN from 138.250.128.201 and 138.250.128.202.

With this setup, internet access via the firewall/gateway and the external
LAN is fine from either machine.

When I tried to ssh or ftp from the iBook to the desktop using the ip
address of the desktop, the connection was very slow to establish (30secs +)

Accessing webpages on the iBook served by apache on the Ubuntu machine was
fine.

The problem was resolved when I added entries for the machines in the
/etc/hosts files, with names clarke (192.168.55.2) and darwin
(192.168.55.1).

I can now ftp or ssh using the machine names : ftp clarke or ssh clarke, and
the connection is quick as you would expect.

Why was the hosts entry required for this?

Lee