Intermittent Browsing

[Chris Floyd]

I've got a multi-site WIN2k network connected via a WAN
link. Each site has a DDNS service, WINS and at least one
AD DC. What I am seeing is intermittent loss of browsing
of the network from the two primary sites (the third is a
co-lo so browsing isn't important just now).

There seems to be nothing in any of the DC logs about
this other than a rare browser master election which
seems to coenside with the loss of general network
browsing.

The DNS checks out OK and if you UNC path to the server
or system you want it resolves and gets the connection
without issue. My problem is that the users can't always
seem to remember the servers they want to connect to and
thus attempt to browse to them. The other odd ball part
is that it seems to primarily only happen at one of the
two primary sites.

Thoughts or at least suggestions on where to start
looking? Is this a WINS issue? I'd kill WINS but I've got
a few legacy NT4 systems that have apps that rely on WINS
resolves to funciton correctly.

Thanks in advance

 

[David Tesar]

Chris,

The first thing that I have to say is that unfortunately, you will need to
keep WINS around. As long as you are trying to browse and have multiple
subnets, you need WINS in order for browsing to work properly. First, I
would make sure that all of your clients are pointing to a central WINS
server and that the WINS database contains only valid/accessible IP
addresses for the <domain> 1B & 1C record(s). If this is working, then I
would check to see if you have any multihomed browsers. Browsing can be a
pain to troubleshoot, but the browstat utility is a useful utility to help
you out. The following articles should be of help to you. You can access
them via support.microsoft.com and then click on "search the knowledge
base".
191611 Symptoms of Multihomed Browsers
188305 Troubleshooting the Microsoft Computer Browser Service
133241 Browsing Domain Master Browsers w/ Multiple NICs and Protocols
117633 How Browsing a Wide Area Network Works

David Tesar
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