Why doesn't my TX have a name when it gets an IP address from a DHCP server?

[Miner]

When my TX gets an IP address from my home router's DHCP service, it never has a name. I can look at the DHCP client's table in my router, and the entry for the TX always shows Host Name as blank.

Why is that, and can I change it somewhere in the TX?

For the record, I have the TX WiFi Security Update (http://www.palm.com/us/software/esu/) installed.

[Bla8]

Why do you need it? Its not like you can remotely access files or anything on a Palm.

[alt236]

Why do you need it? Its not like you can remotely access files or anything on a Palm.

Actually, you can :p

http://www.freewarepalm.com/communication/palmftpserver.shtml (freewarepalm.com)

[Bla8]

Interesting :) . Well, you still can't assign a name to a Palm device as Palm simply did not implement such a feature (Other than the TX and tungsten C very few devices have wifi). Just use IP addressing.

[alt236]

I would have thought that hostnames are simply granted by the DHCP server and kept in its LAN DNS table.
I wouldn't think that a network device needs to have that feature activated in any way as it can be quite ignorant of its LAN hostname.

[Bla8]

Well, a protocol is needed to tell the dhcp server about the associated nickname of a computer once connected and assigned an ip address. This just makes it easier for computer admins to find a specific machine, that's all.

[alt236]

Sorry, force of habit. You are right.

Got confused with the system we have in place in the university.

We are using DHCP to give static addresses and hostnames to registered systems.

Which, means that if Miner's router supports something similar, he might be able to get round Palm's oversight.

[Miner]

Well, a protocol is needed to tell the dhcp server about the associated nickname of a computer once connected and assigned an ip address. This just makes it easier for computer admins to find a specific machine, that's all.
This is why I asked. On my home network I have another ethernet device with no name. And I get two entries in a DHCP table with blank names like this:

DHCP server assigns 192.168.1.35 to

Nothing after the "to ".

[Bla8]

Well, I have the same thing at my house actually, with my Linux server unable to resolve a hostname to my wireless router along with my TX. The only way I can easily tell them apart is by looking at their associated MAC address (for the TX, this is easy since it is labeled at the back of the device below the serial number).

[alt236]

If you are running linux, then you can set DHCPd to give your TX a fixed address based on its MAC.
You can then add a an entry in your resolution table. Of course, this almost defeats the whole point of using DHCP, but I doubt that you'll be running out of IPs in your LAN :)

[Bla8]

I'm not running out of IPs :) . My router did take care of the problem though and pretty much assigns fixed IPs to the connected devices.

[ejtbatchelor]

You can make your devices accept only one ip from the router while using dhcp. It easily done on XP and Vista. I do this as I also have software firewalls running on my network and I can control which ips are allowed to access to which computer.

[_Em]

Something else you can do: other than creating DHCP reservations (where the DHCP reservations table records a fixed name and IP address for a MAC), you can also do as ejtbatchelor suggested and then add a name to that IP in the router's hosts table.

If it's your computer assigning DHCP, this is fairly trivial. Some routers hide the DHCP reservations table and/or the hosts table fairly deep in the configuration settings, and some don't even provide an interface to modifying them.