Browsing workgroups on remote subnets

Alex H. Vandenham alex at avantel.com
Fri Mar 31 21:12:09 GMT 2000


Is this stretching the limits of what Samba was designed to do?

I have set up a VPN with 2 LANs (I'll call them EastLAN and
WestLAN) interconnected through the internet. On EastLAN there is a samba
server configured to be the domain master browser as well as the WINS server.
PCs connected to this LAN are Win9X and are all in the workgroup EAST. On the
WestLAN there is a samba server configured to be a domain master browser and
the PCs are all Win9X in the workgroup WEST.  This configuration permits PCs
on either LAN to browse (MS NetBIOS browsing) the PCs on the local as well as
the remote LAN. This configuration is working but there is a problem that I have
not been able to solve:

When I connect a new Win 9X PC to either the EastLAN or the WestLAN with the
workgroup set to SOUTH (for example), and point it at the correct WINS server,
that PC can browse all the locally connected PCs and workgroups, but not the
workgroup or PCs connected to the remote LAN.  Similarly the remote PCs can't
browse the new PC either. My understanding of this problem is that the new PC
has just become the local master browser for its own workgroup (SOUTH) and can
not co-ordinate its browse list with the samba servers (since Win9X PCs do not
know how to do that - is that correct?). 

My Question:  Is there a way that I can have this third workgroup show up on
the browse lists on both the local and the remote LAN?  For example, can the
samba server act as the domain master for more than one workgroup and if so,
how?  

Alex Vandenham
Avantel Systems
Ottawa, Canada



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