Inconsistent Client Connection

[CMCDOJO]

I have two W2K servers I am trying to connect between Florida and Indiana. We are using Cisco routers for the VPN connection. I have a problem with the following things ( which seam to be intermittent):

1. net view \\servername is inconsistent and usually does not connect the first few times and then at some point it might start working. Once it finds the server it will work pretty regularly until there is a period of inactivity. Then the whole cycle starts over. The curious thing is I found, that makes me think it is a name resolution problem, is that if I use the ip address with net view I get a connection every single time.

2. Browsing in My Network Places returns the same results as described in item 1.

3. Both servers are running Active Directory and DNS but just the Indiana server is running WINS. The people in Florida did not want to run WINS but a great deal of documention suggests the need for WINS in 95/98/NT when using Netbios and TCPIP but it really isn't clear with reguard to W2K. The documentation actually makes it sound as though WINS is not an issue with W2K.

Thanks in advance,

cmcdojo

 

[peterve]

Hi,

If your DNS is set up correctly, you shouldn't need WINS at all (when you are running Win2K only...)
However, if you need down-level compatibility, you should
install at least one WINS server at both sides.
Set up push/pull replication between your WINS servers, and make sure all of the clients are using their own WINS server

If you are running Win2K only, you would have to make sure that a client in site A can resolve names from site B
There a several ways to do this :

You could put them in the same DNS domain, and let a server in both sides host a DNS zone
Or you could put them in seperate DNS domains, and set forwarders to the other server (so your local server will send requests he can't resolve himself to the other server)


You told me that you can do a net view \\ip_Address
Is this at the site with or without WINS ?
Can you check your DNS setup (because if you can do a net view \\ip_address, the only additional thing is indeed name resolution... and this can be done by DNS)

Good luck


Peter Van Eeckhoutte
peter.ve@pandora.be