Getting two Cisco Routers to Talk (WAN)

[Ivers]

I have 2 companies that I am trying to get connected via WAN. I have both networks set up properly. Meaning the home base has DHCP on the PDC and the two routers are configured so that Router B directs everything to Router A. The only internet access is through Router A, and I am having no problems with internet, both companies can go out to the internet. So the Routers seem to be configured properly.
In the second office they can only see our network if they map a drive by way of IP. But they can't go through network neighborhood and see the domain. They can't login to the domain either for the same reason. I have tried using static IP's to get the second office to see the Domain, but nothing has worked.

It seems so simple, yet I can't figure this out!!

Anyone have any suggestions???

Thanks
Ivers

 

[Ivers]

Ok, im just going to reply to my own message so that I feel just a LITTLE LOVED!

 

[L3Guy]

Ivers;

If you can ping your servers from your workstations and surf and map drives, then the routers are running correctly.

Look at your WINS setup, Your DNS setup. This is a MS issue between TCP netbios and the browser.
I'd jump on MS Technet and see if they have instructions.

HTH

Doug

 

[ScottMac]

Well, depending on how many users you have on the "remote" side of the connection, you may want either add entries in the "hosts" files on the remote computers (that'll give them an easy and quick lookup of NAME to IP Address)pointing to the shared resources on the "main" LAN, or set up a WINS server on the main LAN and point the remote machines at that for their WINS servers.

You know the connectivity is alright, 'cause you're getting through both routers to the Internet. It's got to be something in the browsing protocols, chances are it can't find the names of the shareing computers before the time-out. Somewhere you have to have something that gives the remote computers a clue as to where the resources are. Browsing is a boradcast kinda thing, so it's being cut-off at the router.

You can also try "IP Helper" on the remote router, which will convert the broadcasts to unicasts and "aim" them at the target computer across the WAN. If you're sharing more than one resource on the main LAN, IP Helper might not a good thing...because it's forwarding to one address. It also opens up more than one broadcast protocol by default, so if you use IP Helper, you might wanna read up on it to restrict the "help" to the protocols you really want to pass.

Good Luck

Scott

 

[Nightfall]

Our company has a similar setup. I can tell you that you will want to get DNS setup in your company. Right now, you can't browse the domain or log into the domain by workstation name because your computer doesn't know where the workstation is. If you type "ping "servername"" and you don't get a reply, then it doesn't know what IP address it is at.

You have a couple options.

Use LMhosts on all your systems, this involves a lot of manual typing and going around to every system.

Use DNS, set it up on the server and set up all your workstations to get DNS from your server in DHCP.

 

[Ivers]

Thanks a lot for the help guys,

Nightfall I do have DNS set up,
I think WINS might be a possible solution, the only problem is
My 'WINS' knowlegde isn't very extensive. Which as an NT-Admin probably isn't a good thing to admit
But, in my own defense I am all computer/network self taught, and earned this job because all the nt-admins ahead of me quit =P

Anyway, I'll look up on MS Technet and see if I can get some help on WINS, and do some reading and test it out,

Thanks a lot guys,

Ivers

 

[Dark]

If I can give you an advice, it would be to install WINS from win2k server cd and not from the win NT4 cd. WINS that is part of NT is buggy compared to the Win2k version.