controlling WINS request

[gcluen]

I am having messive WINS broadcast request on my LAN. I don't have the WINS server installed at this point of time. What should i do to eliminate this broadcast and what impact will my hosts have. Thank you.

regards

[brianj]

If you are not using WINS for name resolution are you using DNS? Do you have your clients pointing to a wins server? If so, are you using DHCP? You can take the server IP out of the scope, if the wins has been input manually you will need to change the network settings on each of the machines individually. If you don't have either configured they will broadcast for name resolution.

Any broadcast is going to have to be processed by each host. So, depending on the number of hosts on your network and the number of broadcasts it could be something devasting or it could be something that is using bandwidth unnecessarily.

[gcluen]

Thanks BrianJ for your reply,

Yes I am using DNS for name resolution instead of WINS. Neither all my hosts nor my DCHP server had configured pointer to any WINS server, you were right.

Meaning to say that installing WINS server is the only solution to stop the broadcasting issue? Or perhaps is there a way that I can filter at ports of Catalyst switches?

Best regards

[brianj]

I don't think that filtering at ports of catalyst switches is an option. I am confused in how you can be seeing massive wins broadcasts if you are successfully resolving names via DNS and do not have any WINS configured on your hosts. What tool or utility are you using to determine that there are massive wins broacasts? Can you include the output of what you are seeing?

[gcluen]

I have captured these broadcasts from Sniffer Pro. What I have done here was at XP hosts --> network --> TCP/IP --> properties --> Advance -->WINS tab-->check at lmhost lookup and default netbios setting (

I can not attached the file but have to type them in, it looks like this, from the alert ICON of sniffer pro.

Status type log time severity Description

------ ---- -------- -------- -----------

- - 08/12/04:time critical WINS no Response WINS:-10.0.0.255

Thank you

[andrew.butterworth]

Have you got an Windows 2000 AD? If so you can do away with NetBIOS completely, but the Computer Browser disappears as well....

http://www.win2000mag.com/Articles/Index.cfm?ArticleID=21537&pg=2

You can disable NetBIOS either manually from TCP/IP Properties (Disable NetBIOS, do not use LMHOSTS) or configure it via DHCP to instruct the Clients not to use NetBIOS.

Andy