Windows 98: Domain Name Too Long?

Wow, talk about bringing things to a grinding halt.

I’m upgrading my work network today (and yesterday, and tomorrow…) from Novell to MS Server 2003. The domain name is hoshinousa.hoshinousa.com (don’t ask, can’t be changed easily) and its too long for the 98 machines. They only allow for hoshinousa.ho and it gets cut off so they can’t get to the domain. I should also mention that the problem machines are across a WAN on a different subnet…the 98 machines on the server side can resolve with just hoshinousa as the domain. For some reason across the WAN it requires the full distinguished name.

Does anyone know of either a work-around with the 98 machines or perhaps a change I can make to the cisco routers (1600 and 1700) connecting the WAN to allow these machines to see the domain with the shortened version (hoshinousa)?

Many thanks in advance!

Just as a stupid suggestion:

Do you have the IP address for hoshinousa.hoshinousa.com? If you do, then you could use it in the URL and avoid the problem entirely.