Questions about Wins, interfaces, and multicast

[Philip A. Prindeville]

Hi.

	I just got on the list, and I haven't done my homework yet
(that is to say, gone back and read all of the previous mailing list
archives nor memorized the sources), but I do have some time to
contribute to the project so I read most of the files in the doc/
directory to give me an idea of the state of things...  (BTW: I'm
a UNIX/tcpip person, so forgive my naivete regarding all things
PCish)

    (1) Why does Samba only bind to one interface by default,
	rather than just doing a SIOCGIFCONF to get the list of
	interfaces, their addresses, names, netmasks, and
	broadcast addresses?

    (2) What differentiates WINS from plain-old NB name service?

    (3) How is Samba deficient as a WINS server and what is required
	to make it more functional?

    (4) Why do routers need to forward b'cast packets to ports 137 -
	139?  Why don't the browsers just use an IP multicast
	expanding rings algorithm (i.e. increasing the TTL, starting
	at 1) to find each other across routers?  Most routers seem
	to do IGMP correctly these days.  Any that don't are
	seriously broken.

    (5) You can't have "wins server = x.x.x.x" and "wins support = yes"
	in the same config.  OK, I'll bite:  why doesn't the
	configuration parser make this sanity check?

Those are the only questions I could come up with for now.  Give me
time and no doubt there will be more...

If you reply, please copy me on the reply as I get the digested
version of this list.

Thanks,

-Philip