Laptop does not always recognise server

[John]

Brian McKee wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 4, 2008 at 6:14 AM, John <John at dmj-consultancy.co.uk> wrote:
>   
>> In Firefox: try to access my local home page by name but with my
>> external URL (.co.uk instead of forcing the local intranet domain,
>> .local) - works fine
>>     
>
> Your local domain is .local?   Are you using Zeroconf or is it
> possible your laptop has avahi running and it's conflicting with the
> existing domain setup?  I haven't spent any time on avahi so I know
> little about it, but the coincidence seemed like a good place to
> start.
>   
Yes, by using .local, it seems to ensure that it does not get out to the big wide world!

just checking in Synaptic package manager, avahi does seem to be 
installed but there's no reference to zeroconf. I have no idea what 
either of these do!

John