[sclug] DHCP and DNS

[Will Dickson]

Hi all,

For various unimportant reasons, I decided it would be an idea to 
migrate my LAN to DHCP. Well, it is the 21st century and all that... 
Specifically, I'm running a Smoothwall Express (firewall) which inter 
alia provides a DHCP server, so I thought it ought to be fairly 
drool-proof to set up.

Indeed, the main DHCP bits were - set up the server, told the LAN boxes 
to use it, and they got their IP addresses and DNS details from the 
Smoothwall. DNS proper works fine - I can resolve addresses of machines 
on the external Internet etc.

The problem is that my LAN hosts provide various services to each other, 
so they need to be able to resolve each other's names. I assumed 
(without, I confess, having really thought it through) that the DHCP 
server would wave some kind of magic wand and make this work. However, 
it doesn't.

There seem to be two possibilities here: a) this ought to work, and I've 
cocked up somewhere; b) I'm asking for the moon on a stick, and if I 
want this to happen I'm going to have to put in some actual effort.

Can anybody tell me which of these is closer to the truth?

TIA

Will.