Strategy for mapping the neighborhood

[David Wuertele]

CH> I assume that also means you are looking for nodes in all Scope
CH> IDs.  

Right.  So the problem includes the task of enumerating all ScopeIDs
in use on the subnet.  If I can discover a WINS server, and if I can
prompt it to replicate its table to me, I would have the ScopeIDs.
I'm not sure how to do that.

CH> Note that many implementations will not respond to Node Status
CH> (NBSTAT) queries if the query does not contain the same Scope ID.

D'oh!

I guess one thing I could do is trial-and-error access using various
munges of the local DNS domain name (I might get this from DHCP).

CH> You won't find nodes offering SMB over naked TCP by trying to look
CH> up NetBIOS names or use the Browse Service (unless, of course, the
CH> server is also providing SMB over NBT).

Hmm.... So if a host is only offering SMB over naked TCP, does that
mean it is not advertising its services?

CH> If you are really looking for shares (and not all NBT nodes in all
CH> scopes that have participating members on your local LAN) then
CH> starting with the Browse Service is probably your best shot.

Yes, shares are what I'm really looking for, but I've discovered that
some shares visible by MS clients are not in the LMB's browse list.
So I'm assuming that I have to enumerate the nodes, then ask each one
for its list of shares.

CH> You can find your local LMB (within the same ScopeID scope) by
CH> doing a broadcast query for workgroup<1D>.  You can find the DMB
CH> by querying the WINS server for workgroup<1B>.  If the NBNS is a
CH> Samba server, you can also query for *<1B> and get a list of known
CH> DMBs.

Why would I want to find DMBs if I could already find LMBs?  If there
were a DMB on my subnet, it would also be an LMB, so I would find it
with a broadcast query for workgroup<1D>.  If there were a DMB for
workgroup on a different subnet but no LMB for that workgroup on my
subnet, I think that workgroup must be outside my union of scopes
participating on my subnet, right?  Oh shit, there's the P nodes.  I
guess if there is a P node talking to a remote DMB, and there are no
M/B/H nodes on this subnet, that means I need to talk to that remote
DMB to browse the scope of the P node... I think I got it.

Dave