Errors encountered : " remote server is unavailable"

[rparker at VPR.net]

Hi,

I am having a similar problem when my server is having problems
with DNS. Here's the scenario - I have a unix server which runs
all of our main services (sendmail, DNS, apache and samba). We
have had some problems with our ISP lately as they underwent a
major change and we lost outside connectivity. Our local
machine was 'very unhappy' not being able to do DNS queries,
particularly since we do not control our reverse zone (we have
a subnet of a class C from our ISP). 

What happens under these situations is that established
connections normally behave ok but new connections can't be
established - I get 'Network is busy' error messages, etc.
and things really start to bog down.

It's not going to be easy to correct this quickly, so I am
wondering if it's worth putting up WINS on the Samba box to
keep this name resolution problem (when our connectivity is
hosed) from affecting internal network connections.

I can provide more information on our setup if needed but in
general I was wondering about WINS vs DNS in a local network
situation. Our clients are all Win9x at this point if that
makes a difference.

Thanks for any input -

Rich Parker
Director of Engineering
Vermont Public Radio