Accessing Windows from Linux/Mac by name using TCP/IP

What are some solutions to access Windows by its computer name from Linux and Mac using TCP/IP. That is, from terminal I want to be able to ping my Windows PCs using its host name.

My setup is:

• Various machines running Ubuntu, Windows XP and OS X.
• Networked using a consumer grade wireless router which provides DHCP.
• The only DNS is the ISP's, which resolves Internet names and not local host names.

The Windows machines can ping each other by name. The Ubuntu and OS X machines can only ping Windows by IP address (name doesn't work).

Solution 1:

I ended up going with multicast DNS by installing Apple's Bonjour. Now I can address the Windows PCs by using the address hostname.local from the OS X and Linux machines.

Solution 2:

you can edit your /etc/hosts file to add the ip addresses to internal DNS support.

Obviously a sync solution (meaning using a DNS server in your router or setting up a DNS server on one of your boxes that the router points to)