On Dec 2, 2011, at 8:15 AM, Johnny Hughes wrote: > On 12/02/2011 08:54 AM, Lamar Owen wrote: >> On Friday, December 02, 2011 08:42:42 AM Les Mikesell wrote: >>> [netbios naming is] like a roomfull of people yelling out their own >>> name all the time as a means of identification with no way to handle >>> those out of hearing distance or to arbitrate duplicates. >> ... >>> But that's a matter of luck, demanding that no one uses duplicates, >>> and that all machines can broadcast to each other (i.e., no routers >>> between them...). >> >> WINS does not work this way. WINS works fine even when nodes are separated by routers and is the recommended way (at least by MS) to do SMB/CIFS name resolution in a routed network. > > I agree with Lamar ... I use WINS on a routed VPN network that has a > dozen offices that uses Samba on Linux (and OpenLDAP) as the Domain > Controller. Samba has an option called: > > remote announce > http://www.samba.org/samba/docs/man/Samba-HOWTO-Collection/NetworkBrowsing.html#id2583364 > > and another called: > > remote broswer sync > http://www.samba.org/samba/docs/man/Samba-HOWTO-Collection/NetworkBrowsing.html#id2583504 > > These two options keep all my WINS/SMB networks synced all across the US. ---- indeed but to continue Les's fairly adept analogy, this is akin to running wires & a PA system to another office so the yelling happens not just in one room but in several rooms. WINS itself is not routed but a workstation or a server is more than capable of announcing itself or participating in WINS activity on many subnets. Craig