[Techtalk] RE: Appletalk and Linux

[Ryan Thibodeau]

Thanks for the reponse Walt.


{{If your Mac has an IP it must be using TCP/IP.
{{Therefore you _should_ be able to just ping
{{the mac name and it should return the IP address.
{{Perhaps I'm not quite understanding what you
{{are looking for...

My Mac's do use TCP/IP. However, raw TCP/IP itself cannot resolve host
names. Just as PC's use NetBIOS over TCP/IP (NetBT) for their naming
convention, Mac's use TCP/IP packets tunneled through an AppleTalk capsule
for theirs. So while it may be possible to ping a PC client from another PC
client and receive the host name in the return packet, this isn't possible
when pinging from a PC or *nix client to a Mac, and apparently no one
bothered to include name resolution in the Mac ping utilities that are
currently out there.



{{For appletalk lookups there is a utility called
{{nbplkup which displays appletalk addresses.

This could be helpful. Do you know what package its a part of?


{{Also, I have my local network setup on DNS
{{so if I do 'host 10.0.0.1' it returns the associated
{{hostname.

I am assuming from this that either every machine on your network has a
static IP address or that your DHCP server makes entries and updates your
DNS table. Unfortunately I am running DHCP on Windows and DNS on AIX (I
inherited the setup), so I can't use your type of system. Would be cool if I
could though.


Ryan Thibodeau
IT Specialist
Athens Newspapers, Inc.