Network strangeness

[Aaron Konstam]

I have two machines on a home network:
cyrus - wireless
saturn - wired

On cyrus : ping saturn and host saturn both fail saying saturn can't be
found. However, ssh saturn works.

On saturn: ping cyrus works but host cyrus fails.
ssh cyrus, works 

I don't use iptables. Any explanations for this behavior?

Errors are like: 
** server can't find saturn: NXDOMAIN

I suspect that some things use the local /etc/host bu others do not.
--
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Lonely is a man without love. -- Englebert Humperdinck
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Aaron Konstam telephone: (210) 656-0355 e-mail: akonstam at sbcglobal.net