I can RDP to another machine on my home network, only if I'm not also hooked up to my employer's VPN with the Cisco VPN client. Indeed, I can't even ping the other machine by name in this mode, because ICMP suddenly thinks that ( ping myMachine ) now means ( ping myMachine.myEmployer.com ). Of course there is no machine by that latter name, and so it fails.

Even weirder, once I disconnect from the VPN I can again ping myMachine successfully, but ICMP reports the machine by its MAC address instead of its IP address. I don't think I've ever seen ping identify another machine by its MAC address.

So two questions:

1. How can I access via RDP/ping the other machine BY NAME on my local network while also connected to the VPN?
2. Why is ping identifying a MAC address for the machine on my home network, instead of an IP address? And how can I change this so that an IP address is reported instead?

For question #1, I can indeed access the other machine on my home network by IP address. I suspect if I put the name-IP pair into my HOSTS file, then I would be able to access it even when connected to the VPN. But I wonder if there is another (more elegant) solution?