Weird networking problem

[bozrdang]

I have been having a really strange problem for some time now and I'm finally fed up enough to post about it. Anyway, I have a home network consisting of my desktop, laptop, two media servers, and a networked printer connected by a Linksys wireless router (for laptop only) and a couple SMC gigabit switches. My desktop and laptop both run Vista Home Premium. My servers run a stripped down Linux variant called unRAID.

Sometimes when I browse the network, no other computers show up even though I know they are there and powered up. Sometimes they will show up. I haven't been able to determine anything different from the times they show and the times they don't. Finally, when they were showing up, I went and mapped the network folders to both computers. Oddly, whenever no other computers show while browsing the network, the mapped locations always work fine. Every single time. For whatever reason my desktop rarely shows the other network computers, but my laptop usually does, but it doesn't sometimes.

When I went to type this post I wanted to note whether or not it was only the media servers in the basement that don't show up or if the other Windows computer always showed up. I wasn't sure because usually whichever upstairs computer I'm on (laptop or desktop) the other one is turned off. Anyway, when I brought out my laptop and powered it up to see if my desktop could see it, all of the sudden my desktop could see the entire network including the media servers when seconds earlier it couldn't. Strange. I have a new Linksys router because I used to have a Netgear and was having this issue and thought maybe the router was the problem, but apparently not.

I hope this wasn't too confusing and I'm sorry it's so long, but I couldn't figure out an easier way to explain my problem.

 

[bozrdang]

Anyone?

 

[QuixoticOne]

I'll be interested to see if / how you diagnose and solve the problem.
Windows network browsing has always been kind of kludgy if you ask me, and has just gotten worse as Vista has added its own bugs / quirks and intentional incompatibilities presumably to keep it from being too compatible with UNIX / XP / W2K so that people will be more motivated to 'upgrade' / use only Vista. Even in a pure Vista network it can be flaky AFAICT.

I'd just use static network maps / shortcuts and rely principally on those where possible. Since you're running the Home Premium OS your options for switching to a domain are limited.

I suppose you could try adding static lmhosts / hosts entries for the static IPs of the other machines and see if that helps. You could try a WINS server on the UNIX boxes (if they support that) or make sure one of them is configured as a master browser in case that helps.

You could also run some background 'ping' type utility to keep packets flowing to each of the other machines' static IPs every few seconds; maybe that would help keep something 'alive' in the networking stack so that it browses more quickly / reliably. I suppose you could even do something like 'net view' in the background periodically to even more directly provoke that layer of networking.

Of course firewalls are often problems with Vista / XP machines and things like Zone Alarm have a bit of a reputation for being flaky / quirky, so I'd try to disable any 3rd party firewall or network filter on the windows boxes for a test. If shouldn't "sometimes" work, though, so I'd imagine the problem is worse than something totally black and white.

Use static IP addresses where possible, that'll simplify things or simplify work-arounds anyway.

Cheap wireless / internet routers often are very flaky and crash or glitch every few hours / days, but you've tried a couple of variants of those with no improvement so I'm inclined to think that isn't the main problem.

You could try to set your DHCP lease time for a much longer (or maybe much shorter??) value if you're even using DHCP and see if it helps to leave it at a weekly renewal cycle or forcing it to renew hourly. I'd use static, though.

Good luck... use a hub and wireshark packet tracing and UNIX tcpdump and stuff to see if you can trace packet problems to the low level..

 

[Fardringle]

It sounds like your laptop has claimed the job of Master Browser on the network and for some reason the desktop machine is not taking over that task for itself when the laptop is turned off.