[SWLUG] hopefully easy question: naming machines on a tiny network

[Kris Zani]

Hi Mark

yup it is of course possible

in the router admin - probably web based you should be able to reserve 
the DHCP lease - that is the "assignment of the ip" to the machine
 access the web admin - under dhcp you should see a list of current 
leases and you can then (normally) tick a box like reserve.

alternatively, you can set each machine to run a static ip in a similar 
range to the ones you have - but ideally outside of the dhcp lease block
which you will need to check the router admin to know.

in terms of using names the simplest way is to put a "hosts" file on 
each pc.  The location is different for linux & windows dunno about 
about mac osx
but wikipedia is king - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hosts_file

it just lists ip addresses and names.  then when you try and communicate 
like
ping mymacbox

it checks the hosts file to see if it knows the ip.

if you cant work it out msg back and i'll get  copy of the voyager 
manual and perhaps i can then give you some more detailed instructions.

good luck

Kris

Mark Summerfield wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I have a BT Voyager router (a few years old) & 3 machines. The router
> always gives the machines the IP addresses 192.168.1.2, 192.168.1.3, and
> 192.168.1.4. But not always the same number to the same machine. Is it
> possible to tie each IP address to a particular machine (and ideally to
> use names)? Two machines run Linux the other Mac OS X.
>
> I am not terribly good at sysadmin as you can guess...
>
> Thanks!
>
>