I'm wondering if anybody can shed some light on why I might be having difficulty connecting between macbookpros that are on the same network...

I had a recent situation with 3 MBP's all connected to a wifi router and receiving IP addresses from the router. All machines had file sharing enabled, but in one case the MBP wouldn't show up on the other MBP's and when I tried connecting to the various machines by using the correct login credentials using the "connect as" functionality, the login window would just shudder momentarily. I was able to connect two of the machines by ditching the router and creating a local network on one machine. However the third MBP refused to connect, even though I had the correct login credentials.

Do I need to 'flush' the network settings or do some other procedure that refreshes everything???

I have no trouble connecting between the various macs (3) in my home-office network, but out in the field it seems to be a major PITB!

Any advice would be gratefully received! Thanks in advance...