Quick WINS Question

[zeveck]

Do, I have my DNS setup to use the company DNS servers as Root Hints.

Is there an equiv notion for WINS?

The notion I am going for here is, say we have:

example.com [192.168.80.x]
sub1.example.com [192.168.72.x]
sub2.example.com [192.168.76.x]

And I want a machine in sub1 to be able to ping a machine in sub2 by NetBIOS name.

There is a WINS server running in each domain/subnet.

 

[WhoKilledKenny]

As long as you have NetBIOS over TCP/IP enabled on the WINS tab of the TCP/IP properties and have the ip's of the wins servers either statically entered or dynamically entered by DHCP, the netBIOS names should register with WINS. Unless, at the network level WINS traffic is being blocked.

 

[zeveck]

Well, in this case each computer only points to the WINS server within its own domain.

So, a computer on sub1.example.com only has the address of wins.sub1.example.com delivered by DHCP.

The analogous DNS setup works fine as long as the servers are configured correctly. Say that a computer on sub1.example.com only has the address of dns.sub1.example.com delivered by DHCP. It can still ping comp1.sub2.example.com so long as dns.sub1.example.com has dns.example.com as a Root Hint and dns.example.com knows to hand off requests for resolution within the sub2.example.com domain to dns.sub2.example.com.

The question was basically whether WINS can be thus configured or whether it was actually necessary to make every client explicitly aware of every WINS server.

 

[PScottC]

Yes... You will have to configure WINS replication so that the entries go to all servers.

Make sure that when configuring the replication that there are no loops. For example..

S1D1 <--> S2D1 (server 1 domain 1 replicates with server 2 on same domain)
S1D1 <--> S1D2 (server 1 on each domain replicate)
S2D1 <xx> S1D2 (server 2 on domain 1 doesn't replicate with server on domain 2 because that would create a loop)


You could also put a WINS pointer record in your DNS zones.

PSC

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