> Basically any cheap router supports Avahi/Zeroconf/Bonjour … and allows you to reach any other machine of the network directly by its host name instead of it

> Basically any cheap router supports Avahi/Zeroconf/Bonjour … and allows you to reach any other machine of the network directly by its host name instead of its IP. I regularly run into instances where local hostname resolution is unreliable. To improve reliability, I setup a local DNS server to hand out a domain name with the IP address. Even then, whether a client requires a hostname or FQDN to resolve a local address - that can vary over time.