Connecting Network Neighborhood between 2 Subnets

[silentkevin]

I have two subnets at work, and am trying to make it so they both appear as one big network neighborhood for windows NT/2000. How would I go about bridging these 2 networks so I can print from one network to the other?

 

[bignick]

Do you mean to say that when you go to network neighborhood, you have a choice of two different workgroup/domains? You can setup a trust between them, or merge them into one domain - therefore you only have one workgroup/domain in the list.

Now if you are talking about two different networks (i.e 172.16.1.x & 172.16.2.x) then there are several steps to take.
1 - Link the two (use a router, or layer3 switch, etc.)
2 - Use WINS (or lmhosts) so that winblows can "see" across the two networks.
3 - Done.

 

[kylef]

The problem is that when you cross subnets, Windows "Network Neighborhood" browsing stops. This is a result of the fact that ALL Windows SMB file and printer sharing messages are sent as network broadcast messages. These limited broadcast messages will not be forwarded to another subnet for two reasons:

1. If you use NetBEUI, the protocol is not routed and will only travel as far as your ethernet is repeated
2. If you use TCP/IP, the limited broadcast messages are not forwarded across subnets by routers

The way most Windows networks get around this is by using something called a "Domain Master Browser", which maintains a list of the master browsers on each local subnet in your network and facilitates communication between them. Note that the DMB MUST be using TCP/IP and NOT NetBEUI, since it must communicate across subnets and NetBEUI can't do it.

There are currently two ways you can set up a Domain Master Browser on your network:

1. Install a copy of Windows NT server/ Win2k Server on a machine in one of the subnets and make sure that all of the machines have TCP/IP installed and configured.

2. Install Samba on a Linux or FreeBSD machine and set it up to be a Domain Master Browser on your network.

Obviously option #2 is much less expensive. Believe it or not, option #2 is ALSO the most flexible of the two if you don't mind spending time learning how to set up Samba. There is a FREE O'Reilly book available online about Samba that explains in detail how to set up your Samba server if you're interested.