<p dir="ltr">This sounds like you want to have the local only network use dhcp for IP and hostnames. See the link for a quick howto on the dhcp side</p>
<p dir="ltr"><a href="http://www.ingmarverheij.com/configure-hostname-via-dhcp/">http://www.ingmarverheij.com/configure-hostname-via-dhcp/</a></p>
<p dir="ltr">Now you need to get those name/ip pairs into a usable format. As JD said, pushing an /etc/hosts file will work. DNS will also work. You can setup a dynamic DNS service that couples with the dhcp service so when clients get an IP, DNS gets updated with their name and address. See this link for ideas:</p>
<p dir="ltr"><a href="http://www.dnsknowledge.com/tutorials/centos-tutorials/bind-9/howto-setup-dynamic-dns-ddns/">http://www.dnsknowledge.com/tutorials/centos-tutorials/bind-9/howto-setup-dynamic-dns-ddns/</a></p>
<p dir="ltr">Will all of this run on the tiny router? Maybe. I vaguely recall OpenWRT supporting this. Tomato probably does as well. Optionally, use an old lap or desktop as DNS/dhcp server and set the wireless router to passthrough dhcp to it.</p>
<div class="gmail_quot<blockquote class=" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">For a special purpose I'm going to have a Netgear router not connected to the internet for local communications using DHCP. I'll have a server connected via Ethernet and clients using mostly WIFI. I've seen times where in similar setups something assigns a host name to the server. In those cases, I can connect to the server via a host name rather than an IP address. I'd like to do that for this situation. I can't seem to find the right words to get a search engine to tell me how. I'm not running a DNS server.<br>
<br>
I'm thinking the server might be advertising the name but I don't really know how it all happens.<br>
<br>
Thanks,<br>
Jim.<br>
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