I can't do this becasue each office server is named "server" - so it needs to be local to the office
Main Topics
Browse All Topics
Loading Advertisement...
Question
Cisco netBIOS broadcast problems
We have 27 remote offices - each with various cisco routers - I'm a webdeveloper and need to do some redirection to office servers without setting up subdomains.
We cannot access the linux servers (or other computers) by netBIOS name when pinging or by http://
for example I cannot go to http://server - I can in our corporate office, but we have a WINS server.
Here's the quirks that may help solve this:
1. Each office can access the samba server by UNC - ie \\server which is the same server as the web server
2. The office doesn't have a WINS server, but at corporate when we diable the wins server - it finds the netBIOS server names by broadcast - confirmed by nbtstat -r - so its not just because corporate has wins
3. The pings and http request get forwarded to our main web server at our Data Center - for example if I go to http://server it is forwarded to http://ourdomain.com
4. we can ping by the dns name - ie computer.internal.ourdomai
I have no idea what could be causing this forwarding - unless it is something that the Cisco routers are doing. Blocking broadcast requests?
Any help - or a point in the right direction would be very helpful. Thank you in advance.
This Question has been solved and asker verified All Experts Exchange premium technology solutions are available to subscription members.
Subscribe now for full access to Experts Exchange and get
Instant Access to this Solution
- Plus...
- 30 Day FREE access, no risk, no obligation
- Collaborate with the world's top tech experts
- Unlimited access to our exclusive solution database
- Never be left without tech help again
Trusted by hundreds of thousands everyday for fast, accurate and reliable tech support.
- "The time we save is the biggest benefit of Experts Exchange to Warner Bros. What could take multiple guys 2 hours or more each to find is accessed in around 15 minutes on Experts Exchange." Mike Kapnisakis, Warner Bros.
- "Our team likes having a resource that is more secure than just using Google and most experts using this service really know their stuff. It's nice to look here first versus using Google." Dayna Sellner, Lockheed Martin
- "Anytime that I've been stumped with a problem, 9 out of 10 times Experts Exchange has either the accepted solution or an open discussion of the potential solution to the problem." Kenny Red, eBay Inc.
See what Experts Exchange can do for you.
Got a question?
We've got the answer.
Experts Exchange has been collecting answers to technology questions since 1996…3 million and counting! If you have a question, chances are we already have your answer.
Need individual assistance?
Our experts are ready to help.
If you can't find the exact answer you're looking for, ask our exclusive community of 50,000 experts. You’ll get a personalized answer from a trusted professional.
Want to learn from the best?
Read articles from industry experts.
Thousands of free tech tips, tricks, how-to’s and tutorials are available in our peer reviewed articles section. See for yourself how smart our experts are, no login required.
Working on a long term project?
Store your work and research.
Save solutions to your questions, answers you’ve discovered through searching plus helpful articles in your personal knowledgebase for easy future access.
Access the answers to your technology questions today.
30-day free trial. Register in 60 seconds.
What Makes Experts Exchange Unique?
Members of the expert community talk about why the experience at Experts Exchange is different than what you will find anywhere else.
Trusted by the world's most respected brands.
Faithfully serving IT professionals since 1996.
Try it out and discover for yourself.
30-day free trial. Register in 60 seconds.
Free Tech Articles
-
WARNING: 5 Reasons why you should NEVER fix a computer for free.
It is in our nature to love the puzzle. We are obsessed. The lot of us. We love puzzles. We love the challenge. We thrive on finding the answer. We hate disarray. It bothers us deep in our soul. W...
-
SCCM OSD Basic troubleshooting
SCCM 2007 OSD is a fantastic way to deploy operating systems, however, like most things SCCM issues can sometimes be difficult to resolve due to the sheer volume of logs to sift through and the dispe...
-
Migrate Small Business Server 2003 to Exchange 2010 and Windows 2008 R2
This guide is intended to provide step by step instructions on how to migrate from Small Business Server 2003 to Windows 2008 R2 with Exchange 2010. For this migration to work you will need the fo...
-
Create a Win7 Gadget
This article shows you how to create a simple "Gadget" -- a sort of mini-application supported by Windows 7 and Vista. Gadgets can be dropped anywhere on the desktop to provide instant information, ...
-
Outlook continually prompting for username and password
There have been a lot of questions recently regarding Outlook prompting for a username and password whilst using Exchange 2007. There are a few reasons why this would happen and I will try to cover t...
-
Backup Exchange 2010 Information Store using Windows Backup
There seems to be quite a lot of confusion around the ability to backup Exchange 2010 using the built in Windows Backup feature. This stems from the omission of this feature prior to Exchange 2007 s...
Cloud Class Webinars
- Avoiding Bugs in Microsoft Access
Alison Balter takes and in-depth look at avoiding bugs in Access. In this webinar you will learn about using the immediate window to debug your applications, invoking the debugger, using breakpoints to troubleshoot, stepping through code, setting the next statement to execute, ...
- Top 10 Best New Features in Visio 2010
Scott Helmers gives live demonstrations of the top 10 new features in Visio 2010. This webinar will teach you how to create compelling diagrams by adding shapes to the page with a single click, linking the shapes in a diagram to data in Excel (or SQL Server, or SharePoint), ...
- IT Consultant Business Secrets Revealed
Michael Munger, Experts Exchange tech pro and IT consultant, pulls back the curtain on his very successful businesses and answers question on every IT consultant and business owner should know about. He shares secrets on what he did to solve the 5 most common problems in IT, ...
- Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity
Quest CTO, Mike Billon, gives an overview of the steps involved in building a dunamic disaster recovery plan. Through case studies and an examination of software/hardware tooles for monitoring and testing, you'll gain a better understandin of where you are, where you want ...
- Organize Your Visio Diagrams with Containers and Lists
Scott Helmers uses cross functional flowcharts, wireframe diagrams, data graphic legends and seating charts to teach you: how to ustilize all three new structured diagram components in Visio 2010, the best practices for organizeing shapes in previous version of Visio, how to organize ...
- How to Us Objects, Properties, Events and Methods in Microsoft Access
Alison Dalter gives an in-depbth look at objects, properties, events and methods in Microsoft Access. In this webinar you will learn about using the object browser, referring to objects, working with properties and methods, working with object variables, understanding the ...
Join the Community
Give a Little. Get a Lot.
Join the community of experts here and help other tech pros by answering question in your area of expertise. You can earn FREE access to all Experts Exchange's premium features and resources.
Answers
If I understand your correctly, you are saying that at your remote offices, pinging by netbios name does not work and requests to http://server are forwarded to your main server defined in DNS. Even though access to \\server does work as expected. But at the main office, netbios name resolution does work, or at least appears to, even without WINS.
You have not made clear whether the server at the remote offices is on the same subnet as the hosts that are trying to see it. Routers do not block broadcast requests on the local LAN, only between subnets.
I do know that netbios changes are verrrrry slllloooowwwww and if you turn off WINS, it doesn't mean that hosts at your main office don't need it at all. they just may not need it for a while since they would have everything cached. Also, if you have a Windows DNS server that everyone points to, netbios names will be resolved as DNS names because all of the hosts will register themselves with the DNS server and find themselves there. WINS is very old technology and not required anymore.
So what it comes down to is every host in a network MUST have a unique name. The only way around this is to install a host table on every host that points a host name to the local "server" so they don't need to use DNS to look up a name. But this is a klugy, labor intensive workaround to accomodate a poor design.
run "ipconfig /all" on a workstation and see what the "Node Type" is. That will tell you the method of name resolution.
As for WINS, lrmoore is correct. netbios broadcast name resolution will not work through routers. It can only be accomplished by a WINS server or a static LMHOSTS file configured and maintained on each workstation.(not recommended) This is only good for Microsoft Netowkring though. Not internet.
the reason why "http://server" is being forwarded is because "http://" only users DNS. It does not use NetBIOS. so whatever DNS server is configured on your workstations has an entry for the corporate web server. If you are trying to redirect internet applications (http, ftp, etc...), then you would have to have local DNS servers at each location redirecting to the local server, or use static HOSTS files.
To recap:
\\UNCpath = Microsoft Networking-CIFS/SMB
- requires NetBios Name resolution (WINS, LMHOSTS, Broadcast[LAN only])
- If NetBIOS name resolution fails, can also check DNS hostnames depending on Node Type
http://Hostname = Internet applications
- requires Domain Name resolution (DNS, HOSTS)
main point is this: If you have separate LANS with hosts that do not communicate with an Active Directory-integrated DNS server, then netbios is a local protocol that does not cross router boundaries (fortunately for you; you would have a slew of duplicate names otherwise!). Local lookups will work but http uses DNS and the remote hosts will always go to the DNS host entry.
If you want users to access their local servers via http, the local servers must all have unique names in DNS because the hosts check DNS before looking in netbios. Ping also uses DNS first, as does any IP-based application. OR you can set up local host tables, because those are checked before DNS. But this is frankly a stupid and labor-intensive solution. Just add new names into DNS for each of the remote servers, and tell people to use that URL instead.
For what it's worth i'm dividing points to helpful answers. In my case however, here is the situation. Every office needs to access a server with an http request - for specific reasons, we need all the servers to be named the same in each office - we do allow inter-office commiunications, but dns names are registered as office01.internal.domain.c
Thanks again for all the help.
3 Ways to Join
Business Accounts
- Perfect for organizations
- Multiple users
- Save over 36%
- Create a Business Account
Answer for Membership
- Earn free access
- Showcase your knowledge
- No credit card required
- Sign Up to Answer
Loading Advertisement...
by: lrmoorePosted on 2007-05-04 at 04:58:20ID: 19030122
Routers do block netbios broadcasts by design.
Try putting the corp WINS server IP address in your remote client's TCP/IP settings