Newbie question: Do we need WINS?

[Mike Bernhardt]

We have a small Win2K domain that was slapped together.
Most of the clients and all of the servers are on one IP
subnet. We have a UNIX DNS server for the entire
organization and we have set up a Win2K server as a
secondary to that.

Win2K clients on other subnets can't access the domain
network resources unless WINS is enabled, even if their
DNS configuration points to the Win2K DNS server.

I thought we shouldn't need WINS with Win2K but it seems
like we do. Any idea what we're doing wrong?

Please cc bernhardt at bart dot gov when you reply.

 

[Marina Roos]

WINS is needed by W9x, ME- and NT4-clients. Have you got those?
Does the ipconfig/all from the clients show that everything is pointing to
your server-IP?

Marina

 

[Steven L Umbach]

You don't need wins or netbios over tcp/ip only if you are not going to use nebios
name resolution such as My Network Places to access resources and you do not have any
applications that depends on it. Usually netbios might be disabled on a pure W2K/XP
only Active Directory network where you would publish shared resources in Active
Directory and search for resources there only. The description of your network tells
me you are using netbios name resolution to find network resources. If you need to
browse across subnets, then wins is necessary to maintain the browse list. ---
Steve

 

[Mike Bernhardt]

The client in question is Win2K. When you say "everything"
what do you mean exactly? DNS? It has a static IP, not
DHCP.

 

[Marina Roos]

I mean gateway and DNS (and WINS if you got that). They should all point to
the server-IP.
How many nics in the server?

Marina