[DamianM]

Hi,
My problem is my machines ( 2 OSX and 2 XP ) connect to both a gigabit network for internal networking and wifi for getting out onto the internet.
The wifi router is too far away to be connected into the gigabit router. The problem is resolving the machine names, both network cards have the same machine name and more often than not the wifi router will resolve the machine name meaning i have to use the IP to connect to be able to be certain i am using the gigabit.
Is there anyway on OSX ( snow leopard ) and XP to be assign unique names to each card?
Or is there a better solution I am missing?
Any help greatly received.

[Tagware]

Is the internal network and WIFI using the same IP range?

ie. Both NIC and WIFI cards are getting IP addresses from where?

Normally, you would use a for example 10.x.x.x (DHCP Server IP for internal network and 192.168.x.x for the WIFI (DHCP Router)

The DNS settings would be for example 10.x.x.x on the NIC side and 192.168.x.x on the WIFI which would be delivered by the relative DHCP server.

[DamianM]

The two network use different IP ranges.
The wifi 192..... the interal 169... the 169 being outside the range of the wifi allocation. The internal IPs are manually defined. The internal ( netgear ) switch does not seem to be configurable for dns , dhcp etc. The external router is and ISP provided router and has limted configurablity.

[Tagware]

OK 192.168.x.x is vaild. 169.254.x.y is normally reserved and is not routed by routers. This is assumed by Windows client when it does not receive a IP address from a DHCP server. Experance has shown that using 169.254 as address is not sensible.

Where did the external router come from? Where is that plugged in? What does that provide?

If the external router is providing the Internet then that should only be plugged into the WIFI component.

Anyway needs a diagram.
You need to put this down on a diagram as this is problem is not clear.

[TerryNet]

Is there anyway on OSX ( snow leopard ) and XP to be assign unique names to each card?

Pretty sure it can't be done, at least not directly. But you can use the hosts file--c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts on XP--as follows. At least you can try it; I just thought of it.

Let's say your machine names are osx and xp, and the respective ethernet IPs are 10.0.0.10 and 10.0.0.20.

Add to the XP's hosts file
10.0.0.10 osx

and to the OSX's hosts file (have no idea where it is)
10.0.0.20 xp

and then use the names osx and xp for your internal access.

The hosts file assignment takes precedent over other name resolution so that should work.

For this to work you will need to use static IPs on the ethernet cards, and I suggest to not use the APIPA (169.254.x.y) ones. Besides, 10.0.0.x are easier to type and remember.

[DamianM]

Thanks for the help guys, I think i'll go with eh hosts option.

[TerryNet]

Please let us know if it works. Well, let us know also if it doesn't work.