Broadcast to resolve our Novell NDS Tree name

[Krelian]

Recently, our users are seeing slow performace on our IP network which is running Novell 5.1 with NDS and Windows 2000 servers. After we ran a packet analysis on the network, we discovered for some reason, we are seeing alot of NETBios name service broadcast traffic originated from Win2k clients wanting to resolve the name of our Novell NDS tree. It's very odd that Windows hosts would want to use NetBios to query this information. We are running Novell SLP to resolve Novell services (similar to AD's DNS SRV records to resolve Windows services), and all users are running Win2k Pro SP4 with Novell Client for Windows ver 4.9.

Greatly appreciates if anyone has any ideas or inputs.

Howard

 

[supatech]

add your novell server in WINS. Should take care of the probem

CCNA MCSE MCP NET+ A+ Security+

 

[Krelian]

Thanks for the reply. Still, after I'd entered the names and corresponding Ip addresses of our the Novell servers in our WINS server and perform a packet analysis, same thing is happening. The workstations still are doing network broadcasts for NetBIOS "General Name Service" to resolve the name of our NDS tree. Any other suggestions that I should try?

Thanks

 

[Arsynic]

I don't quite understand your problem, but I have almost the same kind of network. We have Novell Netware 5.1 SP7. Is your Novell server an application server? If so, what type of application?

Also, in your Novell Client properties, try hard coding the Tree, Context, and server. You need to have administrator rights of course and it does require a restart. If you've already done this, then ignore.

 

[Krelian]

The Novell servers are for file and printing services only. There are no server based applications running on them. The servers are running fine. The real problem is with all that DNS queries, it's putting alot of broadcast traffic on the LAN. Matter of fact, if a user tries to open and view the contents of a Novell directory using Windows Explorer, it takes up 30 seconds to a minute to see the contents. When I run a sniffer on it, it shows the host machine keeps wanting to resolve for the name of the our NDS tree. Of course our DNS server has no entry for a tree name since technically, a tree name is not a host.

 

[lgarner]

A domain isn't a host, either, but each DC automatically gets added to DNS as an A record for the domain. Try adding the tree to DNS as a host under your domain. Workstations will still query, but will quite down once they get an answer.

If there's actually broadcast traffic, then something strange is happening. DNS queries should be directed to the configured DNS servers.