My spouse has, at her workplace, a Mac OS X machine with web sharing turned on. This machine is, therefore, reachable on the internal company LAN as either http://catnip.local or http://catnip.company.com
[....]
other places to look at for grins and giggles --
man hostname man domainname cat /etc/hostconfig
(/etc/hostconfig is what actually tells the box to name itself automatically, which is causing the use of the local domain, but don't jump to the assumption that you should therefore change it from automatic to catnip.company.com. I don't remember why I don't do that, but I did think I had a good reason. Looking up "etc/hostconfig"+"mac os x" at your favorite search engine might provide some clues.)
The biggest failing with mac os x is its biggest strength -- too much indirection and delegation. It's often really difficult to figure out where the buck stops. But it does "just work" for most people, and they do seem to be making headway at sorting things out so that mere mortal sysads can figure them out.
Have you asked/searched on Apple's boards and mailing lists? I'm pretty the topic has floated there in the past.
--
Joel Rees
Nothing to say today
so I'll say nothing:
Nothing.