Avahi

avahi is a zeroconf service discovery & publishing program.

Avahi Server
Install :

Avahi Client
Gentoo contains the client component of Avahi that enables one to test this service.

Install :

Add the appropriate mdns into the hosts line in /etc/nsswitch.conf, An example line looks like:

Once this is installed it should be possible to ping the hostname of the machine appending ".local". For example: