macmini shows as UNKNOWN in dhcp?

[lloydsj]

I've got a macmini and a macbook. The macmini is configured to use a static ip address, and the macbook gets it from dhcp. Both show up as 'UNKNOWN' for the device name in the dhcp client table of my router... meaning i can't route to them with vnc://<computer name> only via ip etc

However to add to the confusion, when i'm in finder i can see the mac computer names correctly in the list of shared servers.

So my macs can see each other on the network ok, but just dont have names registered in the router. I think i could fix this by putting reservations in my router for the devices but I shouldn't really need to do that.

Any idea's what needs enabling or setting up?

 

[lloydsj]

on further investigation it seems i can connect with vnc://<computer name>.local ???

but the '.local' bit cant be coming from the router and i guess is an osx thing?

 

[MagicBoy]

Yeah, the .local comes from OS X. Check the sharing pane in System Preferences.

I'd blame the router. My Sky Netgear does the same, whereas an uber expensive Draytek I borrowed from work picked the OS X hostnames up fine.

The Sky Netgear picks up the hostname for Windows VMs using bridged networking correctly just not Mac OS X.

Nothing to really worry about.