Reliable cross-platform way of determining hostname from IP address

Question

Within the DHCP table of a router, clients that have sent their network name are listed with IP and MAC addresses. I need a way to get the host names that clients have sent. The router does not store these entries in it's DNS cache, so using host or nslookup fails to resolve IP addresses to hostnames.

The router cannot be accessed (via a control interface) or modified in any way, so rectifying this is not an option.

If a client machine is running SMB/Netbios, the machine name name can be discovered, but this will not work for devices such as Ipads, *nix boxes, etc.

Is there a means to achieve what I'm after?

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Edit: The solution does not have to be timely, common or standard; hackish ways are welcome. I considered faking a DHCP request for each IP, hoping that the router would reveal information about the already-existing lease, but no cigar; further reading of DHCP ensured..

Answer 1

Stop using DHCP and shift to static IP's instead - that way you can have a hosts table (or internal DNS or whatever), and as the IP addresses of the machines don't change you don't need to worry about dynamic updates.