Confusion over how to configure WINS

[Peter Polkinghorne]

samba at samba.org said:
> Mac wrote:  P.S. One possible alternative (I've never tried it, but 
> it should work), is to abandon WINS altogther.  If you have just 
> Win9x/NT and Samba clients they can get by quite happily on DNS 
> alone.  You'll have to enable 'NetBIOS Resolution uses DNS' on the 
> Win9x machines (use 'winipcfg' to check) (and the equivalent on 
> WinNT)).
> 
> You've piqued my curiosity now.  I see it checked, but what options 
> within the Network settings *cause* it to be set?  I do have dialin 
> clients that don't seem to want to use DNS for this, and would like 
> to fix them. 

I too got excited about this - but alas for Windows NT 4.0 at least,
the DNS resolution is ONLY used after successfully contacting a WINS
server.

However the Samba WINS server can do DNS resolution - so you could have
many of these being local - this is what we do on a per campus basis.
All our servers have a 1:1 correspondance between DNS & Netbios names.
Note this last fact is not necessarily the case.

Finally there is a Microsoft article on this: Browsing and Windows 95 
Networking - currently at:

 http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/techart/msdn_browse1.htm

(see also part 2 - with good flow diagram on name resolution).

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| Peter Polkinghorne, Computer Centre, Brunel University, Uxbridge, UB8 3PH,|
| Peter.Polkinghorne at brunel.ac.uk   +44 1895 274000 x2561       UK          |
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