For the last week, I have been dealing with a problem connecting between my machines at home via their name: I just type in the computer name and usually the files just come right up. It works beautifully as I have a desktop and a laptop that I switch between at home and I take my laptop to work. It seems I'm not the only one who is having problems
http://www.computergripes.com/earthlink.html.
I read a few blogs hoping that they had changed their minds and they would allow me to opt-out. Nope.
This gives some detail... but no joy. I finally realized that when I do a ping, it is appending the "earthlink.net" domain entry on my computer.
Then it happened, ephiphany struck. I went into my router and removed the domain entry and now everything appears to resolve correctly when I type in only the machine name.