Multiple WINS Servers Enhancement

[Arni Ingimundarson]

On Sat, Jul 08, 2000 at 05:20:54AM +1000, Christopher R. Hertel wrote:
> On Jul 8,  5:12am, Herb Lewis wrote:
> >
> > Win98 SE definitely allows more than 2 to be entered. I tried 5 and
> > quit so I'm not sure what the max is. How they use those values is
> > another question :-)
> 
> It *should* be a simple failover.  Use the first one.  If you get no response
> at all try the second, and so on.
> 
> The other possibility is that you'd try the second one if you got a negative
> name query response from the first, etc.  In that case you'd assume that the
> WINS servers are *not* sync'd.  This would be one way to merge NetBIOS name
> spaces.  The implications make my head swim, though.

My experience tells me that's exactly what windows does.

We have here on Campus a quite big very unstructured net, connected together
by IP routing linux boxen.  We have 2 WINS (for the same reason Steve
mentions below), one Samba and a NT one.  We have 2 main workgroups using
each using its own WINS (the one closest).  As long as both workgroups
appears in the browselist, the windows boxen can browse both WG when even
when the first WINS is up (and windows configured to use both of course).

I would welcome this feature alot, cause now I can't resolve all names
except by instructing nmblookup to use a specific WINS and try both WINS.


> On Sat, 8 Jul 2000, Steve Langasek wrote:
> 
>> The impression I got was that most people running Samba in their shops
>> were using Samba as their WINS server.  The reports are that it is more
>> reliable.  In general, the majority of clients are Windows clients, and
>> these are limited to two WINS servers: primary and secondary.
>> Typically, the primary will be on the PDC and the secondary will be on
>> the BDC.
> 
> Just to chime in, I know there have been comments in the past from people who
> are using Samba as their WINS server and find it very reliable, BUT have
> multiple sites connected by slow, unreliable links--in a case like that,
> Samba's stability isn't much help when the network keeps you from getting to
> the WINS server reliably.
> 
> Steve Langasek
> postmodern programmer 


-- 
Arni