Question Network discovery hell!

[marcUK2]

Hi, new user, hope this hasnt been answered a hundred times already, but after a week of googling, I am still at a loss...

I have 5 PCs connected on a home network. One of these PCs, randomly just refuses to show up on the network list in explorer after reboot. All are running win10. The problem one, is the one I just built and has a fresh install of WIN 10 pro. Have had numerous networking problems when building the others last year, but I solved it all eventually (new to networking). I understand there have been huge problems with win 10 updates breaking things, to the extent that I took all my PCs off the net after I got them working. Theyre just renderboxes with one controller.

The only way I can get it to become visible is to do a network reset, which defaults into a public profile which I can change to private to have it show up. But this setting wont persist. On reboot, even with the private profile selected, it still wont show up - forcing another network reset.

I have followed all instructions I can find by messing with these services and setting all to Automatic...nothing works

Computer Browser (Browser) (not available on my build)
Function Discovery Provider Host (FDPHost)
Function Discovery Resource Publication (FDResPub)
Network Connections (NetMan)
UPnP Device Host (UPnPHost)
Peer Name Resolution Protocol (PNRPSvc)
Peer Networking Grouping (P2PSvc)
Peer Networking Identity Manager (P2PIMSvc)
dns client
ssdp discovery

and enabled SMB1.0

Is there anything else I need to know? Is it the lack of Computer Browser (Browser) service that is killing my progress?

Also, anyone know why my controller PC, which has wifi and is part of 2 networks (ethernet - private and wifi - public) will take a very long time to find web pages when the ethernet connection is active (sometimes I just turn off my switch to make it work faster).

 

[mxnerd]

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/159168/multiple-default-gateways-can-cause-connectivity-problems

And are private & public profiles in same IP ragne? If yes, it probably will confuse the PC.

and probably your wifi adapter with public profile on your controller PC has higher priority than private adapter? The lower number, the higher priority.

How to Change Network Priority of Connection on Windows 10

 

[SamirD]

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/159168/multiple-default-gateways-can-cause-connectivity-problems

And are private & public profiles in same IP ragne? If yes, it probably will confuse the PC.

and probably your wifi adapter with public profile on your controller PC has higher priority than private adapter? The lower number, the higher priority.

How to Change Network Priority of Connection on Windows 10

This will explain the issue with the computer with the wifi and ethernet. You can manually change the routing by changing the routing tables, but just best to disconnect one of the connections.

As far as your network discovery issue--are you trying to connect to systems using their name? This has been broken since windows 95. The best way to deal with this is to simply use the system's IP addresss vs its name. And since all your systems do not need Internet access, I would highly recommend putting them on their own lan using a cheap switch that is not connected to your router or any Internet access. This way, you can assign static IPs and they will just work. Plus, no annoying updates to break things since the computers can't update.

 

[marcUK2]

Hi,

The problem with discovery is when I open windows explorer and expand the network section, the computers dont always show up. I have got around the problem by adding all my computers to quick access. As these are headless renderboxes, I often need to connect to them with remote desktop to troubleshoot or shutdown. Bit difficult if they dont show up.

 

[marcUK2]

@mxnerd

Thanks, this has largely fixed the internet problem, still a little delay, but now I can connect to webpages before they time out.

 

[marcUK2]

next question!

Now, one of these computers is a laptop that also has its own wifi....i have just discovered that if the ethernet cable is not in the laptop but it is connected to the same wifi network as the controller PC, then I can still access the laptops files over wifi!

Not a huge security issue for me, but as im trying to understand networks, how do I stop this behaviour, so that I can only access the laptop if its connected by ethernet?

 

[mxnerd]

next question!

Now, one of these computers is a laptop that also has its own wifi....i have just discovered that if the ethernet cable is not in the laptop but it is connected to the same wifi network as the controller PC, then I can still access the laptops files over wifi!

Not a huge security issue for me, but as im trying to understand networks, how do I stop this behaviour, so that I can only access the laptop if its connected by ethernet?

Of course you can access the laptop's files if it's connected to the network, using wifi or ethernet. That's the purpose of networking. If you only want to access laptop through ethernet, just disconnect wifi from router/AP or disable it. There is no other way.

 

[SamirD]

Hi,

The problem with discovery is when I open windows explorer and expand the network section, the computers dont always show up. I have got around the problem by adding all my computers to quick access. As these are headless renderboxes, I often need to connect to them with remote desktop to troubleshoot or shutdown. Bit difficult if they dont show up.

I have about 20 systems I connect to in the same manner. I gave up on the network browsing a long time ago and assign dhcp reserved IPs to each system and now know them by IP. Never any issues this way.