On Fri, Dec 2, 2011 at 10:29 AM, Lamar Owen <lowen at pari.edu> wrote: > >> I'm sort of surprised no one pointed out that mDNS/avahi type of name resolution was probably the way to go for a heterogenous network but yes, it too is not generally installed/configured on a normal Linux install. > > While there is some distinct merit to a zeroconf setup (especially if you have Mac users), in a network of the OP's size multicast DNS could possibly end up being effectively using broadcasting, too, and thus not help in terms of network efficiency. But I don't think efficiency is a major concern with 8 workstations. > > Having said that, I don't have any metrics since I've not personally tried it to see. Nobody cares much about hardware/network efficiency these days since you are likely to have plenty except in those marginal wifi areas, but broadcasts get accepted by every NIC on the network and pushed up the network stacks until something drops them, where multicasts are only accepted by things that are configured to want them. -- Les Mikesell lesmikesell at gmail.com