I have several machines, both virtual and physical, in my home network. Currently I have to connect to each machine via IP address. The one main machine I connect with to all the other machines is running Windows Vista.
Is there a way I can have some sort of DNS capability inside my network so I can refer to these machines with a name instead of IP?
I think this would be a common problem in most households (running a few computers) and I think there might be some simple solutions out there. This would be something most routers should support out of the box – but why don't they?
Can anyone recommend some of these or an easy way to accomplish this?
Best Answer
WINS/NetBIOS is the traditional distributed "workgroup DNS" for small private networks. It's why you can see other computers in the "Network" on Windows.
If you have static IPs and don't change around your VMs or computers, then just making a quick hosts file and distributing that is a quick, easy and once over fix. "Visiting laptops" won't resolve to that of course.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hosts_file
Afterthought: If these are Windows computers, then simply enabling Network browsing, and file and printer sharing should do the trick.