Simplify the network

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Not the most helpful of answers, but...

...unless you're having trouble with some sort of WINS/domain-controller setup, Samba should be able to look up the hosts' *NetBIOS* names irrespective of IP.  That's how the usual peer-to-peer mode of the protocol works- not to say that it's particularly reliable.  To run in the P2P mode, which actually has some other official name I forget, use the 'bcast' parameter at the right place in smb.conf.  I forget how the bootstrap procedure for Samba works/doesn't work, but this involves nmbd  - so if it doesn't start it itself, you'll have to figure out how.  Alternatively, you could run nmbd on a Linux box as a WINS server, or figure out how to use a real Windows box for the task.

That takes care of Samba.  If you want to ssh, ftp, or http around your local LAN without managing hosts files, you need DNS- and that don't come easy.  Basically, you could replace the router (Linksys?  Knowing the model would help..) with a better one - I am forever in love with 2Wire's Homeportals because they do DDNS ("Dynamic DNS") based on each machine's DHCP hostname field, or a Linux/BSD box works as well - or keep the router, turn off its DHCP server, and "augment' it with a DHCP/DDNS-server combo running on a 'real computer.'  As long as it assigns addresses in the local subnet the router uses, (probably 192.168.1.0 with a subnet mask of 255.255.255.0.. or maybe something lamer, like 255.255.255.248?), and avoids the 'DMZ' address, everything should work.

That's a total pain in the ***, though, not that entirely rolling your own with *NIX is any easier- just more flexible once you get the hang of it.

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Quixote wrote:
:-? Isn’t the router supposed to have two IP addresses?  One fixed, for the other machines on your LAN to use, and the other one dynamic, to be assigned by the ISP?

At least, that’s the way I always understood it…

That's how it works... though you can have a static address from your ISP, and still require NAT if you want to use more than one host with it.

I assume he meant the 'hosts' file commonly used in lieu of a local DNS- DNS being what allows "http://www.amiga.org" to point to whatever IP it points to- and something like "http://www.home" to point to whatever machine on your network is named 'www.'  (Or if the machine is named 'bob,' and runs a telnet server, you could 'telnet bob.')

The mess of protocols born of Windows, OS/2, and *much* earlier products were born of a software API- called - bing! - NetBIOS- designed to allow IBM PCs to throw bits on the wire.  Not only did that wire not carry Internet Protocol, it wasn't even ethernet or Token Ring.   Seems like a lot of sites are finally covering the history; a year ago, I could only find one good document.  Anyhow, in absence of any of the nifty IP services you take for granted today, they rolled their own everything, which became something of the de-facto standard for Wintel LANs (mostly concerned with file and printer sharing).

When IP took over, they made a valiant, if somewhat braindead effort to port the "standard" to it, leading to what IBM called "TCPBEUI" and MS named "NetBIOS over TCP/IP."  See, depending who you believe, the NetBIOS Extended User Interface is the framing protocol (IBM), or the wire transport (Microsoft).  Thus, on OS/2, the choice was something like  NetBEUI over NetBIOS (raw-on-the-wire), or TCPBEUI over TCP/IP (IP encapsulated)... In Windows, they *used* to say NetBIOS over NetBEUI (raw-on-the-wire), or NetBIOS over TCP/IP (IP encapsulated).   This also begat extensions like WINS, and weirder things, to allow the normally broadcast-oriented protocol to hop segments and subnets and generally be at all useful to moderately-sized networks.  Edit: Samba, and IIRC most Windows incarnations, can *also* access machines using the IP encapsulation by DNS address, rather than NetBIOS/NetBEUI name, if it's not confusing enough.  Technically, you're *supposed* to be using the NetBIOS/NetBEUI or WINS resolver; that's what Network Neighborhood uses to produce its list.  Oh yeah, and the whole whatever-over-TCP/IP mess is supposed to be called "CIFS," so you can pretend it's a nicely standard "Common Internet FileSystem" instead of 10lbs. in a 5lb. bag.

This is why MCSEs are often seen carrying around 900 page books and looking haggard.  (Actually, as of 2000 or so, the guide I flipped through simply said something like "Select NetBIOS over TCP/IP; in case of failure, the Microsoft Certified technician shall perform a reinstallation of the operating system."  Surprising how many pages they spent on issues that ended in 'perform a reinstallation of the operating system.'  No word on interoperability with others' products, because... well, why would anyone be using non-Microsoft products?)

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tormedhammaren wrote:
Turn off the DHCP-mode in the router (and set
your machines up manually) if you can do that

 :-o

I knew I'd forgotten something obvious!  Thanks for the save!

That'd be DHCP for the *local network,* not for the *Internet* side of the router, which should stay configured to whatever the ISP requires to connect.

Of course, you'll probably also have to set important info- like your ISP's DNS server addresses- manually on each machine.  That's one of the reasons I *heart* DHCP.

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ronybeck wrote:
The only time that laziness could ever justify using DHCP is when you just want plug a machine in to the network, and use the shared network.  If you want to set up servers on your lan then you need to think a bit harder.

DHCP is flexible.  It's just that the simple implementations in most routers are not, though 2Wire wins by practically providing a Network-In-a-Box, and it sounds like D-Link's at least trying with the 'MAC caching,' here.  (Static address assignment can be/*is* a feature of DHCP- and if all hosts use DHCP, the problem of address conflicts can be avoided, at least until someone starts up a rogue DHCP server on your LAN.  Not a big deal at home, but there's a reason 'campus' situations dig it, and it's really pretty easy to set up.)

So do *all* the cheapo routers offer static DHCP by MAC now, or is D-Link more specialer than Linksys in this regard?