Dynamic Hosts?

[ironduke]

Hi all
I'm running two PCs, one openSuse 10.2 and the other XP, that are sharing an ADSL internet connection via a Netgear router. The router assigns their IP, Gateway and DNS adresses via dhcp.
I wish to access the XP machine thru smb and Putty/SSH/vnc to the linux box but at the moment I can only do so by looking up the IP address on one machine and running back to the other to type it in.
eg on the windows box I type ipconfig, memorise the IP address and enter smb://the.ip.address/sharename on the linux box to access the shared directory. The IP address doesn't change very often but it might one day so I don't really want to specify it into their hosts files.
Is it possible to have a hosts file that dynamically updates the IP address from dhcp so I can just enter the hostname instead of the IP address?
What are my options?

[gogalthorp]

Have you set up a peer to peer network Like "mshome" on the XP?

Have you tried the Add Network folder wizard in the network browser?

[Smither]

Can netgear routers not reserve specific IPs for certain MAC addresses? That's what I was using for a long while so that this machine was always 192.168.0.3 even when .2 was free.

[ironduke]

Gogolthorpe: Yes and yes... doesn't work, I have to enter the IP address specifically.
Smither: That sounds good, I'll have a look at that. Looks like I'll have to reset my router again... I never can remember the password :^)

[gogalthorp]

Did you follow instructions here? Static IP addresses are not the real answer it is just a work around.

Samba Networking I: HowTo Set up a Suse-Windows Home Office LAN