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Need each network to see the Network Neighborhood of the other

Our company has a VPN from a central office to a branch. Both have Multitech gateways using IKE. At the central office we have a Windows 2000 server and a WINS server. VPN is properly working at ping level or using terminal server, but I cannot implement that each network could see the Network Neighborhood of the other. Thanks
Sebastian,

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If you want to be able to resolve all machines on each network via NETBIOS name, then all machines on each network need to explicitly have the private IP address of the WINS server as their own WINS server. This can be set up in the network control panel of each PC or assigned dynamically from your DHCP server.

You can check the database on the WINS server to determine if the remote machines are being registered by it. If they are not registered, then something is blocking (or not passing) the NETBIOS session data transfers.

Also, your routing plant needs to know how to route to the remote network from either location. The easiest way to do this is to set routes on default gateways at each location. The gateways need to be able to pass NETBIOS broadcast messages across the routing plant. Many routers don't forward these broadcasts, so if your WINS addresses are set up correctly and the network still is functioning properly, it may be the gateway routers that are blocking the traffic.

Hope this helps.
All the best,
Mark

This was first published in July 2002

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