How does network neighborhood work?

[beer]

I'm wondering how network neighborhood actually works and why I'm occasionally getting some strange behavior. For example. I'll be browsing my domain and all of a sudden I can only see one random computer in the domain even though there are about 40 or 50. And I can never see computers on the WAN connected via the frame relay. Where can I figure out how it works, how to stop this behavior, and how to be able to browse through computers on the WAN as if they were locally? Becuase if I remember correctly, i used to be able to...

 

[spidey07]

It works by something called NetBios. We can go pretty deep on exactly what happens and how it works but I'd suggest searching MS knowledge base for things like "netbios" and "browse list".

Simply put netbios is not a routable protocol. I know your probably using only TCP/IP but the mechanisms for netbios over TCP (nbt) work the same way. So you need some kind of netbios name server that maintains a list of all netbios nodes. This server is called WINS (windows internet name server I think) and is absolutely necessary for a good functioning network neighboorhood if you've got a WAN.

Without a WINS server the pc is broadcasting a "hey, somebody give me a list of computers in my workgroup/domain" to which a PC or server will resond "ok, here you go". If the computer that responds does not have a full list then you'll only get a small subset of computers.

Its a lot deeper than that but that should be enough to get you started. Bottom line is if you run a windows NT network and you have more than one IP subnet then you should be running WINs on a NT or 2000 server. Then you use DHCP to push out that WINS server address to each client.

 

[beer]

So THAT'S what WINS is. I never actually knew what it was used for

Thanks

It gives me a place to start. Thanks.