localhost or LAN addresses in /etc/hosts

[Bart Silverstrim]

Derek Broughton wrote:
> Chris G wrote:
> 
>> On Mon, Dec 15, 2008 at 09:54:13AM -0400, Derek Broughton wrote:
>>> Chris G wrote:
>>>
>>>> The whole point is to make things easy to configure, my router
>>>> certainly *doesn't* know the names/addresses of machines on my LAN
>>>> and I don't really see how it could.
>>> The usual way is by the machine asking for DHCP to send its name, and
>>> the router sends back an IP - and updates its local DNS.  This is not
>>> implemented in every router, but it's _really_ common.
>>>
>> So the *router* decides what the machine's name is?
> 
> No, "the machine asking for DHCP" (ie, your computer) "sends"  its own 
> name to the DHCP server.

Sorry, this also can be a way to name a device.

I was thinking of situations where you can update the DNS records to a 
fixed name for a given IP.