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I have a computer in the network with computer name: XP-201112453 Without knowing the IP, how can I telnet to access this computer?

I tried:

telnet XP-201112453

but terminal gives me "nodename nor servname provided, or not known" as if the syntax is wrong. I search over the name and only find telneting an IP address. Is it possible to telnet a computer just by knowing the computer name alone?

[EDIT] Telnet from a Mac OS X to access a Windows XP machine. Because IP changes regularly, I would want to find a way to access it by its username or computer name.

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  • check what nslookup give you.
    – Hanan
    Dec 27, 2011 at 11:40
  • 1
    What is the OS?
    – Zapto
    Dec 27, 2011 at 18:15
  • From what OS to what OS? And what software is running on the computer you're trying to access? (Bonjour? NMB?)
    – David Schwartz
    Dec 27, 2011 at 18:49
  • telnet from Mac OS X terminal to access a Windows XP machine
    – KMC
    Dec 28, 2011 at 0:28
  • By defult the telnet service is disbaled in Win XP. Are we assuming that this is turned on?
    – Zapto
    Dec 28, 2011 at 7:54

2 Answers 2

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You can telnet to another machine using its name, but the name should be resolvable.

If it is defined in your hosts file, the found IP mapping will be used.

If it is resolvable via DNS server, it should be OK also.

If it is a netbios name (it appears so), you need to have winbind package installed (I am assuming Linux OS here). Under Windows, resolving netbios names should not be an issue.

Under Linux OS, you can check the order (priority) of these lookup sources in the config file /etc/nsswitch.conf. Look for the line that starts with hosts:.

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Can you ping the hostname and it then resolves an IP address? If it doesn't then the hostname is not resolving correctly in DNS. When pinging the hostname it should return an IP address which you can also use.

If it is a Windows machine you can then add an entry into you /System32/drivers/etc/hosts file and add the hostname XP-201112453 to the file with the IP address from your Ping command above.

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