At 5:03 PM -0400 7/10/02, Gan Uesli Starling wrote:
>Hello,
>
>On PPP there is an argument like "usepeerdns"
>for, obviously, using a peer's DNS.
>
>Is there something similar for LAN connections?
>
>It occurs to me that if I can ping a server by
>name on PPP, then I ought to be able to by LAN.
>Can I? How do I?

If I'm reading this correctly, you want to use hostnames to talk 
within the LAN, and are not just asking how to do lookups for hosts 
on other sites (you want to find a computer in the next room, not a 
website).

>Saw much about DNS and BIND in the DOCs. But
>I don't really want to set up my own DNS server.
>I just want to use the one on the LAN at work.
>There must be a way....

Well, that would depend on whether there even is one on the LAN at 
work...Not every IP address even has a name.

Are the addresses at work private, non-routable addresses? i.e.:

# RFC 1918 specifies that these networks are "internal".
# 10.0.0.0      10.255.255.255
# 172.16.0.0    172.31.255.255
# 192.168.0.0   192.168.255.255


If so, then someone would have had to take the time to create "fake" 
DNS records for all of the IP addresses.

Even if they are "real" IP addresses, the only way to tell if they 
have DNS names is to try an nslookup on the IP. Have you tried asking 
the administrator of the LAN (if it isn't you) for the address of the 
name server?

Mike
-- 
Bikers don't *DO* taglines.