ping windows from mac by name
Hi All,
I have a mix environment network (windows and mac) based on an Airport Extreme. My workflow introduces an average of 5 windows computers a week to the network, they usually exist for a day or two and my preferred mechanism to reach them while on my network is with Remote Desktop from the mac.
What I would like to do is to be able to reach those windows machines by name. To test this mechanism I decided to use ping, if ping can resolve the name then Remote Desktop should be able to as well. Trying to ping a windows machine from the mac by it's given netbios name has proven very difficult, in fact not possible as of yet.
They way I deal with it today is a follows:
1) Request a specific IP address for the windows machine through Airport Extreme based on the machine's MAC address.
2) Use the specific address to create an entry in /etc/hosts
What I have tried:
1) Introduced a WINS server on the network but found that the mac will not use it. I have read all the postings about the WINS setting not sticking on the 'Automatic' location but on 10.5.5 the setting is not persisted either. I have also verified that when the name is not found in /etc/hosts it is attempting to do name resolution via DNS.
Any help would be greatly appreciated!
I have a mix environment network (windows and mac) based on an Airport Extreme. My workflow introduces an average of 5 windows computers a week to the network, they usually exist for a day or two and my preferred mechanism to reach them while on my network is with Remote Desktop from the mac.
What I would like to do is to be able to reach those windows machines by name. To test this mechanism I decided to use ping, if ping can resolve the name then Remote Desktop should be able to as well. Trying to ping a windows machine from the mac by it's given netbios name has proven very difficult, in fact not possible as of yet.
They way I deal with it today is a follows:
1) Request a specific IP address for the windows machine through Airport Extreme based on the machine's MAC address.
2) Use the specific address to create an entry in /etc/hosts
What I have tried:
1) Introduced a WINS server on the network but found that the mac will not use it. I have read all the postings about the WINS setting not sticking on the 'Automatic' location but on 10.5.5 the setting is not persisted either. I have also verified that when the name is not found in /etc/hosts it is attempting to do name resolution via DNS.
Any help would be greatly appreciated!
iMac, Mac OS X (10.5.2)
