WINS with XP and DNSDomain

[CHM1]

In our network we have ca 1200 Windows XP Pro desktops and microsoft Windows servers.
On the PCs DNS and WINS are configured and it seems to work fine.
But when I use Ethereal to monitor network traffic, I see that the PCs send NBNS frames to the WINS server to ask to resolve a name like "hostname.DNSDomain" and the WINS server responds he does not know (it only knows "hostname" as Netbios name and not "hostname.DNSDomain"); then the PC sends the same request but broadcast all the network; obviously no response...
The node type is hybrid.
I could try a point-to-point node : i have no more broadcasts, but always the "bad" request for "hostname.DNSDomain" to WINS server.

How to tune this fine ?

 

[ShackDaddy]

I would go to P-node and then take some time to figure out what the workstations are actually asking for.

Once you are in P-node, you've reduced the traffic in question by 95%, but if you want to resolve the remaining 5% direct traffic, figure out if there are a select few workstations making those queries or if it is generally all of them. If it's the latter, I'd examine your DHCP options and make sure that nothing's been misconfigured there as far as name-space.

Also, examine the config tab on your DNS server that configures the behavior of the WINS resolver (inside the DNS Manager). It may be that your DNS servers are trying to resolve names using WINS and are initially only removing the .com or .local or whatever when submitting their queries.

It's also possible that this is default behavior on the workstations, in the same way that putting a single word into a browser will generate queries that add a suffix to the word, you may also have a behavior that tries adding .dnsdomain to the hostname. If you've ever watched RegMon or FileMon work, this behavior will seem very familiar. There are lots of 'features' built into the system that go an extra step to resolve/find paths and names required for different operations. If you can't figure it out relatively quickly, I wouldn't spend too much time on it.

But who knows. If the behavior is intended, there may be a registry key change that would turn it off.

ShackDaddy