Trouble with Netbios over two subnets, can this be resolved with a domain controller

active-directorynetworkingsubnet

I'm working on upgrading the network at my office… Right now we have two subnets, one for our workstations (on a wireless network) and one for our servers (mapped to static IP addresses).

We're having trouble with folder sharing, etc. due to Netbios barfing on our dual-subnet layout. Is there a way around this? Should I just hook up our workstations to a wirless access point, without the subnet?

Something else to note, I will be setting up a domain controller shortly and putting all of the workstations and servers on the domain. Will this take the place of Netbios (not sure if I know what I'm talking about) in my network?

Any help is appreciated… Thanks for your feedback!

Best Answer

I believe this behavior is by design as NetBIOS works with broadcast packets. Setting up a WINS server when you set up the domain controller (and enabling the Computer Browser Service if it is Win2k8) and pointing clients to that WINS server should resolve this (assuming you have routing set up correctly).

WINS doesn't replace NetBIOS, but it provides a central point for NetBIOS name resolution that can work across subnets.