internal domain names?

[zen_dog]

Is there a way I can give the computers in my network domain names as apposed to numerical ip address?

Thanks guys!

[garyalex]

This is very dependant on your network configuration, but assuming that you are using a Linux server as your LAN server, you can setup dns and a dhcp server and with some configuration can allocate names to your workstations using a domain such as yournetwork.lan or yournetwork.local ... Some more details on what you are running would help to assist you.

[zen_dog]

at the moment I have my network as follows:

cable modem->linksys router->other computers on network.

is it possible on my current setup?

[garyalex]

In that case setup dns and dhcp on on of the computers, and set in dhcp the dns server to be this server.

For more info:
DHCP Mini Howto
DNS Howto

Those links will give you a good background to setup what you want to do.

[HROAdmin26]

Unless you are doing it as an exercise, there's not much point in creating a DNS server for 2-3 machines.

Just add the names you want to use to each systems' hosts file.

Linux = /etc/hosts
Windows = %WINDIR%/system32/drivers/etc/hosts

Each line is an IP-name pair:

192.168.10.214<tab>dmz-server

This ties the name dmz-server to the listed IP. So if you "ping dmz-server" the OS resolves the name to the IP and then sends an ICMP packet.

[zen_dog]

so if dmz server is running apache or something when I type it into my browser it will resolve? I'm doing it mainly to learn to be honest.

[jledhead]

linux resolves hostnames in the order of host file-->dns server
windows resolves in the order of host file -->dns server

so if you add your machine names to all the host files then typing the name in the web browser will work, but only in your lan, this will have no affect on computers that you didn't change the host file or outside of your lan.

[zen_dog]

great just tried it and its worked a treat. what benefits would running a dns server give me. forget the fact I only have 3 computers

[jledhead]

a dns server gives you the benefit of centralized management of your dns names. so if you have a dns server and change the ip and/or name of a machine you change it in one place. if you are using host files then you have to update every single host file on every machine. so if you only have 3 machines then running a dns server will be overkill, bigtime. but if you have 100 machines you don't want to have to manually change the host file across all 100 machines.

[zen_dog]

so a dns server is sort of like a central hosts file? sorry its so simple just trying to get my head around this.

thanks for the help by the way