# Networking question **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [March 2, 2012, 3:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/networking-question/614517 "2012-03-02T03:40:41Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![gazpacho](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/6f9a4e/32.png) [@gazpacho](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gazpacho)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2012, 1:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/networking-question/614517/21 "2012-03-03T01:44:16Z")
> [@ZipperJJ](#): > > I think we’ve gone way past the answer here, which is what **md2000** posted in post #3. If all of your computers have names and are all in the same workgroup then you don’t need anything special with your router to access them by name. You have to configure sharing on your computers but that’s it. > > I just typed \awesomesauce into Explorer (shut up!) and it brought up all the shared folders on my media computer. I have no idea what its IP is but I know it’s not static. I think that this is how things are supposed to work. I do know that I initially setup sharing between lappy1 and desktop just using the windows 7 homegroups. It was working well for a while but then it stopped working. In the course of trouble shooting the issue I found I could map network drives as \192.168.1.117\music.mp3 but not as \desktop\music.mp3. In the course of debugging that I tried pinging desktop and found that ping responded saying it was pinging [desktop.rr.com](http://desktop.rr.com) and the IP address of [desktop.rr.com](http://desktop.rr.com) was a timewarner owned IP address. So I instituted the host file. Perhaps I should back that out and see if things break. Perhaps my ISP is messing things up by returning a valid DNS answer for desktop. ---
**Author:** ![dzero](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/5f9b8f/32.png) [@dzero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dzero)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2012, 2:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/networking-question/614517/22 "2012-03-03T02:11:26Z")
> [@gazpacho](#): > > Perhaps my ISP is messing things up by returning a valid DNS answer for desktop. It shouldn’t be going out to the wan. If you can’t see the computers under ‘network’ in Windows explorer, something is wrong. ---
**Author:** ![si\_blakely](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d9b06d/32.png) [@si\_blakely](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/si_blakely)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2012, 3:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/networking-question/614517/23 "2012-03-03T15:35:36Z")
This is probably your ISP DNS being set up with wildcard response. This means that any DNS queries that should fail to resolve are sent to a landing page that generates advertising revenue for the ISP. It is a failure to comply to internet standards. What this does is prevents name lookups from falling through to Broadcast WINS name resolution on a DNS failure. Local Host file lookups occur [first](http://support.microsoft.com/kb/172218). You may be able to fix this by changing the resolving DNS. You could change the DNS on all your computers to a standards compliant one (OpenDNS or GoogleDNS would be options). You could also do this just on your router, so the client PCs use the router DNS and that uses a better DNS than the ISP one. I thought there was a way to set WINS over DNS lookups, but I can’t seem to find it for Windows 7. I still contend that a properly configured DNS/DHCP server on your router would solve this problem somewhat faster, but it isn’t how things are for you. Good luck. Si ---
**Author:** ![gazpacho](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/6f9a4e/32.png) [@gazpacho](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gazpacho)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2012, 4:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/networking-question/614517/24 "2012-03-03T16:17:10Z")
Thanks again for the replies. lappy1 cannot connect to desktop if desktop is not in the host file. In explorer I see desktop and a list of shared libraries in the panel to the left but when I try and look at the shared libraries on desktop I get a message: Windows cannot access \DESKTOP\music.mp3 If I remove desktop from the host file on lappy2 sharing via homegroups works fine. Pinging things from lappy1 and lappy2 both return the ISP machine at [desktop.san.rr.com](http://desktop.san.rr.com) so it would appear that this has nothing to do with my homegroup issues. Any ideas about what could be wrong with lappy1 would be appreciated. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/networking-question/614517.md?page=1)