I'm familiar with the trick of of editing the /etc/hosts file to direct your computer's traffic to specific IP addresses. Now, I'm looking for a LAN-wide solution. Of course, I could edit all of the computers' /etc/hosts files (manually or automatically), but that's not ideal.
An ideal solution would involve a machine running a DNS server, and the router recognizing that as the server that takes precedence over anything that internet-wide DNS servers may offer. Or, perhaps, the router could act as the DNS server (after all, it knows how to convert computer names to IP addresses as part of DHCP). I'd prefer not to need to change any settings on the computers on the network.
Any suggestions? I'd hope this would be pretty easy.