My local network name is usually myhostname.local, but sometimes other people on the network can't access me at that address and I have to give them my network IP address (which changes).
How can I confirm my name on the network I am currently logged in to?
All this mDNS/Ahavi stuff is very platform dependent. Your computer will advertise its hostname but it's the other computers that set its DNS name on themselves.
.local on the end,.local, and.localIf you're sitting in a network of a single, controlled platform, the answer is fairly simple... If you aren't, it's not.
If this is a common issue, and it's a network you control, it might be worth setting real DNS for your computers through a centralised DNS server and having that add DHCP leases to that. pdnsd is something I've looked at before but there are others.
Note: If the router isn't industrial, you'll need to check you can set the DNS server to an internal IP. I had issues with that very issue on a Netgear router and never managed to work around it.
Failing that, external services (Dyndns et al) could let you set local, illegal IPs to real domain names. Eg you could be resolved through d3vid-internal.d3vidsdomain.etx.
