Webservices Unknown Host Exception

When our webservice client tries to connect with the webservice server, I get an an unknown host exception. When I change the host name to ip address, I am getting ssl handshake exception and this i was told is because the certificate has the host name where as I am trying to connect using IP. The system is able to resolve hostname using nslookup.

Here are additional details:

Appserver: weblogic
webservices client: generated using apache axis.

Any help on this issue is greately appreciated.

Thanks,
Chethan