Resolving an IP or MAC address to hostname

[annsolomon]

Can anyone tell me how to find the hostname of a computer on my network if I have their IP and MAC addresses?

Ann

 

[Serbtastic]

If you have the IP address, you can do an nslookup on it and if reverse resolution has been set up correctly, you should get the hostname. Otherwise, if they are windows clients, you can try an nbtstat on the IP (eg. nbtstat -A <IP address>)

 

[annsolomon]

I had already tried both.

nslookup returns the IP address of the DNS server and tells me it can't find the IP address I entered; says it a nonexistent domain.

nbtstat -a returns my IP address rather than the one I entered and give me a &quot;host not found&quot; message.

I did successfully ping the IP address before each of these two commands.

Is there something else I can try?

Ann

 

[Serbtastic]

Is the machine on the other end a Windows machine? Then nbtstat -A <IP address> (make sure you use a capital A, it is case sensitive) should return the local netbios name cache for the machine.

Post the exact output of nbtstat -A <ip> here.

 

[kenred]

I think if you
ping -a <IP address>
that should give you the host name, or does here.

Ken

 

[pansophic]

In order to receive the host name from an IP address, the DNS server needs to have an 'in-addr.arpa' entry (reverse DNS). Many people do not create these entries, some do. That is why when you look up the IP of your DSL modem you get something like:

206-231-252-151.rev.isp.com.

Funny, the -a switch for ping on Linux is an audible alert. You get a beep each time a packet returns. That must be a Windows command line switch.


pansophic

 

[annsolomon]

Sorry for the delay; I've been out of pocket but will return to work this morning and have further discussion with our network administrator. I believe the DNS server we use is located at our ISP and not in-house. Does that make sense? If I'm right, maybe they don't have reverse DNS set up. Thanks all for the feedback.

Ann