So the fact that this isn't possible easily is the answer to Animat's question, "how did we screw up networking." As for how I would solve it, it seems like so

So the fact that this isn't possible easily is the answer to Animat's question, "how did we screw up networking." As for how I would solve it, it seems like something like mDNS should be in the solution space. But I don't think consumer routers or operating systems make this easy enough.