Messing around with my network on Linux (looking for noob stuff, not complicated networking things that make my brain cry)

[feba thatl]

First of all, today, I had a comcast tech come by. He was incredibly
unsuited to working with computers (he had to hunt and peck to type...), so
unsurprisingly he had absolutely no idea what Linux was. He radioed for
help, and the response was "uh.. linux is like... a software". Luckily, my
mom's work box runs XP, but I'd like to be somewhat more informed in the
future, plus have some fun.

I googled for an equivalent of ipconfig /release and /renew, and got
ifconfig up/down <device>, but it sounded like this was for that device, and
that I had to do something else for the router. So my question is, how would
I do this for the router? (Netgear, not in the mood to check the model right
now so just let me know if you need that info)

I've also been screwing around with ping and found a couple computers on my
network where I'm unsure of what they are. One, is there a way to tell all
of the devices on my local network? The "Attached Devices" page on my router
doesn't show anything-- not even my
physically-connected-to-the-damn-thing-by-a-cable computer. Two, is there a
way to tell what a device is with it's IP address? Like have it report some
information about itself?

I'm running (a bastardized) Ubuntu 7.04, if that matters. I'd also be
interested in any other fun easy-to-do LAN things. I'm easily amused, I
still get giddy whenever I ssh to my main box from a laptop and open a text
file in nano, so there has to be other fun things to do...
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