Small (SoHo) LAN, how to manage local DNS etc.?

[compdoc]

> So how should one manage this sort of a system?  I can run DHCP on the 
> NAT router but that doesn't provide DNS for the LAN so I don't get 
> names for my systems.

There are firewall distros that provide excellent dhcp, and local dns naming
services. I can ping any PC on my lan by using its simple name. And I run
one in a virtual machine on a fileserver so it doesn't require a dedicated
computer. 

There are also dhcp and dns services you can install on any PC on your lan.
I especially like Windows Server running in a VM for this, just because of
the great gui, but any linux/bsd/whatever based machine can do this as well.
It basically comes down to a machine that's running 24/7 on your lan. 

And there must be some soho routers that can provide the same services.
Although it a lot of work, there are routers that can have a distro burned
to its rom to replace its OS with a *nix based OS like openwrt.