Topic: WINS, LMHOSTS, Network Neighborhood?

[Wayne Baldwin]

I would like to be able to find (browse) other clients on my LAN when attaching VIA VPN.  I'm using a VPN system included with my firewall (SonicWall Pro).

   Idealy, Network Neighborhood would be great, but it doesn't look like that's possible?  I have read about using FIND COMPUTER or LMHOSTS but since I'm using DHCP, it looks to me like the DHCP issue of renewing leases will make either too difficult for end-users to maintain considering the altering IP addresses.

   Is there a way that users can VPN and easily find other shared computers on the LAN?

Thanks!

[jimbo]

What you need is a primary wins server for all your clients coming in via the VPN and LAN to all connect to. You would put this on the lan and configure your VPN clients primary wins server to be that machine. if you are doing this via DHCP the you would need to edit /etc/dhcpd.conf (or the template) and change the netbios-name-server to be the machine on ther LAN eg. 192.168.100.100.  (I have no idea what netbios-dd-server is, you may want to set this to the same machine). Or on each client put that address into their network configuation.

"/etc/dhcpd.conf"
subnet 192.168.0.0 netmask 255.255.255.0
{
    option broadcast-address    192.168.0.255;
    deny bootp;
    option domain-name  "home.com";
    option domain-name-servers  192.168.0.1;
    default-lease-time          86400;
    max-lease-time              604800;
    option netbios-dd-server    192.168.0.1;           <---- maybe edit this??
    option netbios-name-servers 192.168.100.100; <---- Edit this
    option netbios-node-type    8;
    option subnet-mask          255.255.255.0;
    range    192.168.0.65 192.168.0.250;
    option routers 192.168.0.1;
}

[Wayne Baldwin]

Than you for your reply.  You had me all excited, I thought this would be the answer for me, but no such luck.  I checked and both the netbios-name-server and the netbios-dd-server are already set to my e-Smith box (192.168.1.1) which is where my client WINS are pointed.  If I didn't mention it, my client is a WIN2k Pro system, and I'm wondering if that is the root of my problem?  I'll have to try to test this on a downgraded OpSys.

>What you need is a primary wins server for all your clients coming in via the VPN >and LAN to all connect to. You would put this on the lan and configure your VPN >clients primary wins server to be that machine. if you are doing this via DHCP >the you would need to edit /etc/dhcpd.conf (or the template) and change the >netbios-name-server to be the machine on ther LAN eg. 192.168.100.100. (I have >no idea what netbios-dd-server is, you may want to set this to the same >machine). Or on each client put that address into their network configuation.