How to get "fresh" sun to recognize internet #'s of neighbors?

[Daniel Smith]

1) You set up a Sun with a new OS, say, 4.1.1

2) You have an ethernet adapter all hooked up, so your Sun is physically
   on the network

3) Now, does anyone know of a way where the new Sun could "grab" internet
   numbers (192.9.205.40, etc) of one of its neighbors?  Could etherfind
   possibly help?

The reason I ask is:  I'm going to be teaching others how to configure
some turnkey systems, and if I can put something into a shell script that
could go out and ftp/somehow get the /etc/host file from another machine
on a local network, then that would be one less question that I would have
to ask a user of the script ("what's the internet address of a another
machine on the network?").  Thanks for any leads!

[[Ed's Note: Assuming you have a host that's active on the network, you
could watch the arp cache of the Sun (ie: arp -a) and get the IP number
from there. -bdg]]

				Daniel