Terminal Can't Find LAN Systems By Name

[boonedocks]

I'm a Mac newbie with a MBP. I can see my Windows XP system in the Finder under shared, as well as a networked hard disk I added with an smb connection. These systems are all on a linksys router.

However, when I go to the terminal and try to access these same systems by name, using ping, ssh, etc., the Mac cannot find them.

And my XP box cannot find my Mac using ping from a Cygwin terminal.

Any ideas what I should be trying to make this work?

(The other systems are on dynamic IPs; I'd rather not switch them to fixed IPs and hard code them into /etc/hosts.)

Thanks.

[belvdr]

Well, SMB uses some broadcasts to translate names to IP. Terminal only uses DNS and hosts file.