Connect via Wi-Fi using computer name instead of IP address

Question

I have been connecting two PCs via Wi-Fi and I'm using IP address to do this like the example below:

String ipAddress = "192.168.X.X";
Socket socket = new Socket(ipAddress, 8888);

My IP address regularly change so this is a hassle for me and I want to use the computer's name instead of this. How is this possible?

EDIT:

From the replies below, I was able to do it this way on two PCs:

String ipAddress = "somename";
Socket socket = new Socket(InetAddress.getByName(ipAddress), 12345);

and this

String ipAddress = "somename";
Socket socket = new Socket(ipAddress, 8888);

but when I apply it on my Android app, it doesn't work. Is there a special way to do it in Android?

Answer 1

Instead of an IP adress you can also use a hostname. For example if your server has hostname "foo.bar.com" you can use

Socket socket = new Socket("foo.bar.com", port);

In your local network you should be able to use the hostnames of the local pc's. I have just written a small example that sucessfully connects to my printserver:

import java.io.*;
import java.net.Socket;
import java.net.UnknownHostException;


public class SocketTester {

    /**
     * @param args
     * @throws IOException 
     * @throws UnknownHostException 
     */
    public static void main(String[] args) throws UnknownHostException, IOException {
        //Create socket connection
           try{
             Socket socket = new Socket("printserver", 23);
             BufferedReader in = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(
                        socket.getInputStream()));
             try{
                 while(in.read()!=-1){
                     String line = in.readLine();
                     System.out.println("Text received: " + line);
                 }
               } catch (IOException e){
                 System.out.println("Read failed");
                 System.exit(1);
               }

           } catch (UnknownHostException e) {
             System.out.println("Unknown host: kq6py");
             System.exit(1);
           } catch  (IOException e) {
             System.out.println("No I/O");
             System.exit(1);
           }

    }

}