question on using WINS on 2003 server

[harveymasons]

Hi great forum, glad to have found it!

I have a question pertaining to WINS. We will be moving to 2003 server AD shortly. Currently running novell 5.1 w/ XP and 2000 clients.

MY boss seems to think we will still need a wins server when we move to 2003 w/ AD. Well, not need it but thinks it will be beneficial because it will causue less broadcasts from the clients?? I am not sure I am understanding any advantage to using a wins server with this environment. I Was under the impression that DNS can and will handle all the client requests for name resolution now- more efficiently as well??

I'd really like to hear your opinion on this issue. I am aware that if using 98/nt wins can be beneficial but all clients are Xp and 2000 pro.

your help is greatly appreciated.

regards,
Harvey

[corturbra]

Hi Harvey

Welcome to Windrivers.

Use WINS... even though XP/2000 claims to not use WINS, it lies.... tried to implement a 2003 network without WINS. PC's would not join domain properly, would drop connections, errors galore, including "could not locate WINS Server", all until I installed WINS on the DC, then everything was happy.

The hit on network traffic is so minor you won't even notice it, set it up on the same server you setup DNS on to keep your life less complicated.

Edit - all client machines were XP Pro SP2 btw.

[harveymasons]

Thanks for the response. So I guess DNS isn't totally self sufficiant at this point in that WINS will allow for netbios name resolution and run in harmony w/ dns??

thanks again,
harvey

[Ya_know]

Hi Harvey

Welcome to Windrivers.

Use WINS... even though XP/2000 claims to not use WINS, it lies.... tried to implement a 2003 network without WINS. PC's would not join domain properly, would drop connections, errors galore, including "could not locate WINS Server", all until I installed WINS on the DC, then everything was happy.

The hit on network traffic is so minor you won't even notice it, set it up on the same server you setup DNS on to keep your life less complicated.

Edit - all client machines were XP Pro SP2 btw.

What??? That's not right...I've never had a need for WINS, and I have had XP all the way down to 95 logging into 2003...

[corturbra]

What??? That's not right...I've never had a need for WINS, and I have had XP all the way down to 95 logging into 2003...

Then tell us how you did it, cos I get nothing but problems on DNS only.

[emr]

Then tell us how you did it, cos I get nothing but problems on DNS only.

Same for me here; I've done lots of W2k3 installs and set up domains with clients from W98 upwards and never had to use Wins yet.

DNS takes care of it all. Difficult to tell you how I did it in a few sentences but suffice to say I just followed the standard dcpromo then made sure DNS was running correctly. Obviously you have to add W9x and NT4 and below clients to DNS manually as they have no dynamic update facitlity.

Wins was never a consideration for me.

emr

[corturbra]

Then I stand corrected and apologise for posting duff info... now off to find out how to do it, if it can be done.

[emr]

Then I stand corrected and apologise for posting duff info... now off to find out how to do it, if it can be done.

Ten of my clients will testify it can be done.

[corturbra]

Ten of my clients will testify it can be done.

Cool as. Building a 2003 network next week so will look hard at it then.

[CeeBee]

WINS may help very much if you have several subnets or many clients, otherwise locating computers becomes a problem. Just install it, it doesn't do harm.