[Hampshire] Networking issue

Can anyone give some guidance on a networking issue.

My network connects to the outside world through a Netgear DG834GT
wireless router that provides DHCP and NAT. The network runs the
standard private 192.168.0.x IP range.
From the Netgear settings screen, under Attached Devices, all pcs
connected either cabled or wireless are listed showing IP address and
MAC address but only my debian server is identified correctly in the
Device Name column, the rest are shown as ‘unknown’.

This is usually not a problem, but I have just built a machine with
ubuntu server to experiment with the idea of setting up an intranet at
my wife’s school (assuming I can get it all to work). This is where my
problem lies. The ubuntu server does not show its hostname in the
attached device list, which I guess is equivalent to a DNS server for
the LAN.

I have looked at all the files I can think of on the debian server to
see if I am missing anything on the ubuntu server - /etc/hostname,
/etc/hosts, /etc/resolve.conf, and as a result added a few things. Am I
missing something? Strange thing is I am not sure why the debian server
is always listed fully.

Also, quite often when I go to the Attached Devices list my xp laptop is
listed by IP, Device Name and MAC, although when I refresh the page the
Device Name disappears and is listed as unknown. Why should this be?

Until I can ping the ubuntu server by hostname as well as IP address I
cannot move onto the next stage of configuring apache. Which leads me to
a final request… I have googled for a decent guide to setting up an
intranet (using a linux server, obviously) but to run on a windows
network of about 30 pcs running xp. At this stage I haven’t looked into
how the system is provided for in terms of dhcp and dns. Any
recommendations for a text that discusses current software (ubuntu lamp
server) would be very helpful – you can probably guess the level
required by the content of this mail.

As usual - thanks in advance for any replies.

Philip