Can one get wrt54g router to work as nameserver for local network?I

I can get the association between IP address and hostname by looking at
the DHCP client table in the Linksys wrt54g router by means of its
configuration interface, but I can't get it to respond as nameserver to
the hostname using ping, nslookup, or dig, even if I add the router IP
to resolv.conf. External names (not in the local network) get resolved
correctly.

Currently I'm looking in the client table to get the current (variable)
IP, and then using that to access another host on the local network. Is
there some better way, without setting up static addresses on the local
network?