I have Mandrake 9 installed and running on my company network. For some reason, I can ping, ftp, telnet into my linux box from any windows machine by using it's hostname, or using it's IP address, but only from within my local area network. When I try to ping, ftp, or telnet to it from a different location in another town, I can only access it by using it's IP address. Even using hostname.domainname.com can't find it. Our network is in several cities some distance apart. The different locations use different subnet masks, but all use the same domainname.com. The hosts file shows this machine as :

12.115.32.160 mdk9.wtcin.com mdk9

wtcin being the domain name of my company network. All IP addresses on the entire network begin with 12.115 . All IP addresses in my local area network begin with 12.115.32 ...... I can ping or telnet into my machine by hostname "ping mdk9" or "telnet mdk9" from any windows machine whose IP address begins with 12.115.32 , which is My local network. From a location where the addresses begin with say 12.115.35 , I can't reach it by hostname, but I can reach it by IP address "ping 12.115.32.160" does connect.

Is there something I need to do to make the hostname visible to computers on other subnets, or do I need someway to make it join the Windows domain eventhogh the workgroup name on this machine is the same ? Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated.....

THis sounds to me more like a dns issue then anything. I'm assuming that you're running your own domain name, is there an entry in the zone file that points mdk9 to that particular ip address? It's one thing to have a hosts file setup on the gateway that the rest of the internel network pulls from, and it's another to be able to reach that host from outside the network.