Depends on how the computers are configured, and what version(s) of the Windows OS they're running.
In general, traditional Windows name resolution works on the same IP subnet via broadcasts. When going across IP subnets, though, broadcasts won't work.
The fix is to have your computers register with a WINS Server. You don't necessarily need one per subnet: a single WINS Server can usually handle name resolution requests for an entire network composed of multiple IP subnets; but having more than one WINS Server for redundancy is a good thing.
If you have multiple WINS Servers, just remember to configure them to replicate their databases to each other. If you don't configure them to share their info with one another, then you'll only be able to resolve the names of computers that register to the same WINS Server as you.
Starting with Windows 2000 and Active Directory, Microsoft DNS Servers do the job that WINS was designed to do for earlier versions of Windows. I think you can still run WINS on Win2000+.
Microsoft DNS and WINS can be linked to work together in resolving computer names to IP addresses. Also, with Microsoft DHCP Server you can hand out extra info along with the basic IP address, mask, and default gateway: for example, IP addresses of WINS/NBNS Servers and DNS Servers.
WINS and DNS are more elegant ways of resolving names to IP addresses. But you can also use text files on each computer to provide this service locally: LMHOSTS for Windows name resolution, and HOSTS for generic IP resolution. In larger networks, though, these can be more time-consuming to maintain.
Check out the following link:
Windows Networking Design Implementation Guide
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/tech/tk870/tk877/tk880/technologies_tech_note09186a00801aa01f.shtml
