When I ping a remote computer by name, I get a return ping but the IP address is different than that of the remote computer. I can also ping by the proper remote computers IP address and it returns. The return I get from the remote computer is strange to me, it is from a "rack Storage"
Totally different number. The correct IP address of the remote computer is 172.16.0.3. When I ping Frontoffice-pc, I get a return but it shows the IP address as 204.232.162.81.
When I pint Backoffice-pc(IP is 172.16.0.6), I get a return, but it says it is pinging from Backoffice-pc.Belkin with an IP address of 204.232.162.81 and it is getting its reply form 204.232.162.81.
This was not the case when I ping from an XP computer to the front office computer.
When you ping by name, the computer does a DNS or a WINS lookup to determine the IP address. Sounds like the hostname is not properly associated with IP address in DNS.
Check and make sure that you don't have something in the local machines hosts file
C:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts
Quote