Well pointers ... Hmmmm.
I feel like a complete idiot on this, having been working in networking for 20 years and having a similar issue.
My config at issue:
single subnet 192.168.111.x - 255.255.255.0
3 iphones (sometimes more) - 2 appletvs, 2 ip printers - 2 macbooks - 1 macbook pro - 1 mac pro's - 1 mac mini - (all running Snow leopard) plus 1 - mac pro running snow leopard server - I think they are all 10.6.2, but the problem definitely occurs between 10.6.2 machines.
Name resolutions works fine (OSX Snow Leopard Server (SLS) is the name server running DNS) as long as you can ping the SLS. But oddly some machines couldnt.
Then (and this is so weird that I am embarrassed) I changed some IP addresses on the machines that could not ping and it worked! I find that the following addresses had problems 192.168.111.52 ...56 ...51 connecting the name server at ...205
I found that if I changed them to ...50 ...199 and ...196 they worked and could ping and resolve through ...205. They could also resolve if I plugged them into ethernet. But I found that if I changed their IP's I could find wiress IP's that worked well, and (IMPORTANT) I could change the WIRED IP to the one that didn't work and it would consistently fail just the way the wired one did.
I have two "odd things" in my network that might make me unique... (see below) but I am beginning to wonder if this is a broader problem. I too just added a new machine (the Mac Mini) when the problem started. I too have 3 or 4 iphones in the house. I too have 2 apple tv's. I have not tried cross pinging everything but you can bet I will now.
The odd things are: - one - The mac pro's have multiple ethernet interfaces running bonded with 802.3ad (LACP) protocol. I do this for backup speed as 1 pro is a backup server and the other has lots of media and I move terrabytes around (the time capsule did not perform well enough for backup, and the OSX server was backing up faster by 2 to 1 on a single gigabit ethernet card, but beats it 4 to 1 now with multiple links)
Odd thing - two - in order to do LACP and bond multiple ethernet interfaces I needed a managed router (cheap routers don't support it) so I bought a nice old Dell Powerconnect 5224 online (24 port managed wire-speed gigabit ethernet switch), reset it to factory settings, and configured some LACP ports. It does spanning tree protocol and has all sorts of filtering capabilities but I think it is not doing them.
BTW - I find ...199 cant ping ...196 or visa versa, but at least then can resolve names.
Oddly none of this screws up internet access... because they can always get to the gateway (for some reason) and get name resolution through a secondary server out on the net.
I did just get a bonjour update... put it in on one machine didn't help but this doesn't surprise me, I can't see that that is related (this is a problem that happens even when name is resolved)
IF you email me I would be happy to work on this with you, if you have a solution I would be tickled pink!..
Best Regards
The