TR Forums

OK, I'm having a very strange problem. I have a (flat) network here with a bunch of machines on it--about 100. All of the computers are very fast--Pentium 4 clients and Athlon MP servers. They are all in a workgroup, because we haven't yet seen the necessity of a domain. (I'm not wholly averse to a domain, but I'd like to get the workgroup working right first.) The trouble is, we can't browse, and I can't seem to get any of the machines to become a master browser.

I set up WINS, just in case, so we can resolve names, but this is annoying.

FWIW, this network has a fair amount of broadcast traffic, because we have an application that broadcasts real-time info to clients. This is a 100% Cisco-switched network with a 6509 at the core and a few 3548XLs hanging off of it on GigE uplinks, so capacity isn't a big concern. We peak at like 20Mbps per day on our 5-minute traffic averages.

The majority of the machines on the network are Win2K Pro boxes on which we've either edited the registry or turned off the browser service to make sure they don't try to become the master browser. There are a few SuSE Linux machines running Samba. The remaining 8 or so boxes are Win2K server machines. On a few of those, I've set "IsDomainMaster" to "TRUE" in an attempt to get them to become the master browser, but even after rebooting them a number of times, no dice.

Browstat (from the Win2K reskit) shows a large and ever-growing number of election packets on the network, but no machine seems willing to take control. I've tried using very high per-server and per-connection licensing configs just to rule out that possibility, but it hasn't seemed to help.

I've searched Usenet and the MS KB for similar problems, but all I find is generalized browser troubleshooting tips that 1) are overwhelmingly about domains instead of workgroups (if that matters) and 2) I've already tried three times each. Any ideas? Please??

I tend to fine that Domains have the same sort of problems.

Though you made mention of chaning the IsDomainMaster key. I've found that's mostly useless on clients. I don't think setting it to true on a set of workstations will have the sort of impact you want or any at all honestly.

Typically what I have to do is set the MaintainServerList key to No. And have a single machine set to Yes. Leaving it at Auto tends to create elections out the wazoo. I'm not real familiar with how Linux Samba servers behave, hopefully they won't add in a unknown kink to what I've presented.

Yeah, you've described what I've essentially done. Only a few servers have IsDomainMaster set to TRUE, and the rest of the machines have the browser service disabled one way or another. Took a lot of work, and it didn't seem to help.

Hmm.

I've never dealt with making a workgroup that big cohesive with the windows browser service.

Have you've tried seeing what happens when you space out the clients coming onto the network?

Just have the servers on and the clients off and turn on a handful of clients. Is that feasible to test in your environment? If the problem doesn't begin until you hit say machine sixty it would seem like a limitation with the browser service under workgroups. If it starts acting up with just a handful of machines, well then I'd be as confused as you.