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I have two VLANs. Clients are on one VLAN and there are a couple servers (including a file server) on another VLAN. I have L3 routing between the VLANs. Clients can ping the servers' IP addresses and can also (via net use) access SMB shares directly by IP.

However, what we need is for the servers to appear automatically in the "Network" list in Windows Explorer. From what I understand we need a WINS server. I've had absolutely zero experience with NetBIOS and so I'm a bit confused on what our options are.

First of all, on Linux, I'm very much aware that samba can function as a WINS server. However, our file server is a standalone unit (Synology), and the other servers (which are not hosting SMB shares) also need to be available via NetBIOS. What we need is a standalone WINS server that can be configured manually. I don't think samba fits our needs here.

Second, if I set up a WINS server, do clients need to be specifically configured to use it? We want a system, if possible, that requires no manual configuration on the clients.

We also run our own DNS server which is already configured on clients via DHCP, and the file server is reachable by its DNS hostname, but just not via NetBIOS. Some systems can use DNS (specifically, I do know that SMB can use DNS for name resolution) but we also have software that only uses NetBIOS, so pure DNS is not an option.

(Additionally, we do not want to use Windows Server for WINS. By my understanding, if we were to do this, each client that ever queried the nameserver would require a CAL; this would require a lot more CALs than we currently need, so we really want to avoid that.)

Whimsical Seaplane
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    Why don't you create shared folders on the Synology and map drive letters for the users to the shares? Implementing a WINS server is a bit of a step backwards. – joeqwerty Apr 10 '17 at 18:39
  • First, mapping drive letters becomes prohibitive (we have lots of shares). Second, the users need to be able to connect to the shares themselves without substantial amounts of intervention. Third, there are some other NetBIOS-dependent applications that are not shares. With the previous setup, clients could see the servers in the Network section. Now, they are not able to see them. That's the only thing we need to fix for things to work. – Whimsical Seaplane Apr 11 '17 at 02:18

1 Answers1

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NetBIOS traffic is broadcast based. As a result, you have a few options available to you:

A. Allow broadcast traffic to transit the router between VLAN's. This is probably not the preferred method for dealing with this and the results may be inconsistent.

B. Implement a WINS server as you propose in your question. If you do there are a couple of things to know:

  1. In order for WINS clients to register in WINS they need to be configured to use WINS. You can do this by assigning the WINS server to the clients in your DHCP options the same way you assign DNS servers and the Default Gateway to the clients. This assumes that you're using DHCP to assign IP address information to the clients.

  2. If you're manually assigning IP address information to your clients then you'll need to "touch" each client in order to assign the WINS server to each client.

  3. You can use the WINS server of your choice, just know that in order for the clients to use and register with WINS they need to be configured to use the WINS server.

joeqwerty
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  • I set up `samba` to function purely as a WINS server, set it in DNS, then renewed the Windows client's DHCP lease; then, running `ipconfig /all` on the Windows client shows it correctly set as the primary WINS server. However, the servers configured in the WINS server's `lmhosts` file do not show up. If I manually query the server via `nmblookup WINS_SERVER_IP --recursion TARGET_NETBIOS_NAME` I get the correct IP address for the corresponding NetBIOS name. Why is Windows not displaying it in the Network list given that it has the WINS server configured? – Whimsical Seaplane Apr 12 '17 at 01:36