On most private networks, other computers show up as a name. For example, you can do a "ping" command for computername.mycompany.com and it will respond. Or, if you are on a Windows network, you can see the names of some computers in the Network Neighborhood screen.

These are actually handled by two different systems. The former is called DNS or Domain Name Services. The latter is handled by the Windows computer browser service.

Depending on your network's configuration, your player may or may not resolve to a DNS name. It will most likely never show up in the Windows computer browser, though.

Why?

Let's take the latter case first. The Windows computer browser is very Windows-specific, and requires a bunch of Microsoft proprietary code to implement. There's no Windows-specific network code on the car player at all.

Even if you could get the player to show up in the Network Neighborhood, you still couldn't access its disk drives through Windows-style "shares", as there are no Windows-sharing services on the car player. The Linux version of the Windows file-sharing services is called "Samba", and setting up Samba on the car player is, in most cases, more trouble than it's worth.

DNS might still work, though. DNS can be useful if you've got FTP services installed on the car player and you want to access the player's files that way.

In order for your player to resolve to a DNS host name on your LAN, the servers must not only support DHCP, but must also support dynamic DNS. This allows a computer to request a hostname which is granted by the DNS server. Note that many Windows-centric networks do not implement this capability. You might be able to ping computername.mycompany.com on a Windows network, but that computer most likely used the Windows-centric features to request and be granted that name.

If your network supports true Dynamic DNS, then the player's host name will be the name you gave to the player in the Emplode "Configure Player" screen. For simplicity, make sure to name your player with DNS-legal characters in its name-- no spaces or non-alphanumeric characters. For instance "Tony's Empeg Mark 2" is not a good DNS name, but "tonysempeg" is fine.

If you happen to be the administrator of the DNS server, and your player is on a fixed IP address, then you can create a static name for your player on the server if you like.

If you only need to access the player by name via one or two computers, there is a utility called "FindEmpeg" that can add your player's name and address to the local workstation's HOSTS file. It is detailed here.

Keep in mind that in most cases, name-resolution of the player is not required. You can usually connect to the player just fine on any network simply by using its direct IP address instead of a name. You can find the IP address by selecting "About" from the player's main menu.