NetBios Group Name Lookup?

Christopher R. Hertel crh at nts.umn.edu
Thu Oct 7 04:01:39 GMT 1999


Mike and I have been discussing this issue a bit.  Here's the tofu:

- The RFCs say that you should be able to send a query on a group name to 
  an NBNS (WINS) server.  You should get back an array of entries.  If 
  the UDP packet is too small, the truncation bit will be set and the 
  query must be repeated using UDP.

- Instead, the WINS server that Mike is testing against returns only 
  255.255.255.255.  Sending to that address will not, of course, reach 
  any group members that are not on the local LAN.

Is this a bug (or bad implementation) in WINS?

The only solution we could think of was to do a broadcast Adapter Status
Query on that name *plus* send the Adapater Status Query to the remote
members via the datagram service.  Um...  I've heard that some
implementations don't handle the datagram service properly.  Does anyone
know about this?

Finally, should we consider adding a feature to nmblookup such that it 
can also use the datagram service in this way?

Chris -)-----

> Hey,
> 
> Anyone know if you can query a netbios group name and get all IPs of clients
> that register the group name regardless of what broadcast network their on?
> I am trying to implement a getAllByName() function but if I query a WINS
> server for a group name it returns a positive name query request with one IP
> of 255.255.255.255. I can broadcast the query and collect all responses of
> course. Thats what nmblookup does but can only reach the local subnet. In
> other words, does WINS have a function that returns _all_ IPs (or names)
> associated with a group name? Can I get this info somewhere else?
> 
> Thanks,
> Michael B. Allen
> 


-- 
             -- I have a shoehorn, the kind with teeth. --
                                  ---
Christopher R. Hertel -)-----                   University of Minnesota
crh at nts.umn.edu              Networking and Telecommunications Services


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