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[dacker]

I just rebuilt my son's laptop with WinXP.  Under the proverbial, "While I'm at it...", decided to give him space on my NAS box and setup a shortcut to it on his Desktop.

Wired, there is no problem.  Wireless, the laptop does not see the NAS drive at all.  A bit of tinkering shows that it I PING the drive first, all is good. Restarting the laptop causes it to fail again.  Odd....

The network path is:
Laptop->802.11g->Actiontec MI-424WR router->100BT->DNS-323

In the short term, I wrote a quick batch file to execute the PING for him, but this should be unnecessary.

Ideas?

[jamieburchell]

Is the shortcut you created referencing the NAS via host name or IP address?
Are you pinging the IP address or host name?

You could try disabling the Windows firewall/other software firewalls while you are troubleshooting if you haven't already...

[dacker]

Is the shortcut you created referencing the NAS via host name or IP address?
Are you pinging the IP address or host name?

You could try disabling the Windows firewall/other software firewalls while you are troubleshooting if you haven't already...

The shortcut references the NAS via host name; I never thought of trying it via IP address.  Since pinging the IP address seems to "prime the pump" just fine, changing the shortcut to reference the IP address instead just may work as a workaround.  Great idea!

\\NAS-DRIVE\Volume_1\Users\KEVIN    vs.  \\192.168.nnn.nnn\Volume_1\Users\KEVIN

[jamieburchell]

Let us know if it works. You should fix the IP address of your NAS rather than using DHCP to make sure the address doesn't change over time otherwise your shortcut won't work.

If that does work, this would indicate an issue resolving host names to IP addresses (DNS). Here's where I'm hoping more network savvy people could offer some advise on that issue.

Does your wireless network connection properties have your router listed as the default gateway and one of the DNS servers? I'm not sure if this would make the difference although I suspect you wouldn't be able to access the internet properly without that set...

[fordem]

None of the consumer routers I've seen in the past decade actually DNS resolution, but do one of two things - either pass the ISP's DNS server addresses out to DHCP clients, or act as DNS forwarders, and pass the DNS requests out to the ISP's DNS servers to be resolved.

Either way - there is no DNS server on the network to do name resolution of the local host names, and this can cause the problem that jamieburchell is alluding to - however - I'm sure you want to know why the name gets resolved when ping is used.

Although Microsoft Windows does use the industry standard methods to resolve names to addresses, it also has a few other methods of it's own - in addition to DNS, there is WINS and NetBIOS name resolution.

Like DNS, WINS needs a WINS server on the network, but NetBIOS (or NetBEUI) which was designed for small networks, does not - the problem is that NetBIOS resolution is unreliable, even in a pure WIndows environment, and more so in a mixed host environment which is what happens when a linux host such as the DNS-323 is added.

The only way to get 100% functional name resolution is to add a DNS server to your network, one work around is to use the hosts file.

[jamieburchell]

Thanks for the clarifications/corrections Foredem. That takes me back some years to my IT support days when I probably knew more about networking than I remember now!

I use a mixture of devices on my network, Windows PC, Windows laptops, some Linux based devices such as the NAS, Media streamer, Wireless/Ethernet converter etc. I can't remember ever having an issue accessing the NAS by it's name, so I'm not sure why this would be an issue for some. Is it likely that a software firewall could be blocking NetBIOS traffic?

The most reliable thing to do is probably to reference the device by IP address, or add an entry to the HOSTS file on the Windows machine you are tring to access your NAS from:

windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts (open in Wordpad/Notepad)

And add (substituing the correct IP address and host name)

192.168.nnn.nnn    NAS-DRIVE

[dacker]

Let us know if it works. You should fix the IP address of your NAS rather than using DHCP to make sure the address doesn't change over time otherwise your shortcut won't work.

The NAS drive does have a static IP address; the PCs are all assigned IP addresses via DHCP.Referencing the IP address (\\192.168.nnn.nnn\Volume_1\Users\KEVIN) works every time.

I too have a mix of OSs on my network; several Windows PCs, the linux NAS drive, an Ubuntu laptop, and my son's Wii.  My four TV set top boxes all on the network too and are assigned IP addresses.  As soon as I get a cable pulled under my house, I'll be adding my HDTV and Blu-ray player to the mix as well.

I appreciated the discussion on DNS and NetBIOS in this thread; like you, I've forgotten more networking knowledge than I remember.  What fordem said makes all the sense in the world.

[jamieburchell]

Slightly off topic but I assume by putting a wire under your house you mean so you can connect your TV devices up to your router?

I had a similar issue but opted for one of these and it's fantastic. This link from a UK site:
http://www.broadbandbuyer.co.uk/Shop/ShopDetail.asp?ProductID=7251

Not sure if Dlink make one.

Best Regards

Jamie.

[dacker]

Slightly off topic but I assume by putting a wire under your house you mean so you can connect your TV devices up to your router?

I had a similar issue but opted for one of these and it's fantastic. This link from a UK site:
http://www.broadbandbuyer.co.uk/Shop/ShopDetail.asp?ProductID=7251

Yes, my intent is to connect a Samsung 52" HDTV, a Netflix-enabled Samsung Blu-ray player, and (I forgot to mention) my son's PS3 to the router.  I'll have to put a switch behind the TV to handle them all on one cable, but I already have a 4-port gigabit switch I'm not using.

I'm rather frugal.  The cable, connectors, and crimping tool I've bought were inexpensive.  The wireless-N solution is relatively pricey.  I've just got to get my butt under the house.

I've also tried powerline networking; I have a half-dozen production samples from a company who makes their silicon.  It does does not work very well in this house, though it was fine in my previous house over a similar distance.

Rick

[fordem]

You guys gotta get back in the groove - this is a use it or lose it field - by any chance do/did your "IT support days" precede the internet and the widespread adoption of ip as the network protocol of choice?

I've been active in the field before IBM introduced the PC and have had the opportunity to work with just about every PC network medium ever used, originally hanging PCs off of main frames as if they were just another workstation and eventually moving on to pure PC based networks.

I know at least one user here is going to get upset with me - but - as far as I'm concerned, NetBeui & NetBIOS and their master browser elections and browse lists have never been particularly reliable, and those problems haunt us today as we try to build networks using nbt (netbios over tcp/ip).

Oh - I'm great believer in pulling copper where necessary, in my book wireless is for convenience.

[gunrunnerjohn]

Well, NETBEUI is no longer even available for Vista and Win7, so it's somewhat of a moot point.  As far as NETBIOS, it's still by far the most popular name resolution protocol for workgroup networks.  It would be nice if all the routers included a WINS server, but that isn't going to happen.   NETBIOS has it's faults, but it's not quite as unreliable as you say.

[dacker]

You guys gotta get back in the groove - this is a use it or lose it field - by any chance do/did your "IT support days" precede the internet and the widespread adoption of ip as the network protocol of choice?

I got my start in PCs by buying a brand new original Compaq Portable with $3K of my own money.  (I eventually added an AST 6-pack Plus card, Plus HardCard, and the 8087 math coprocessor.)  NCSA Mosaic was my first browser, but I did BBSs and Usenet long before that.

I was never really in IT, but picked-up a lot of skills and experience over the years via working in SW QA, occasional dBASE III programming, and digital imaging.  I eventually landed at Intel in Technical Marketing.  After over 25 years of high tech, I'm less enamored with tech for tech's sake and more interested in the marketing (dark) side.  Alas, the recession hit my area in Oregon very hard and I've been unemployed for 10.5 months.

[jamieburchell]

Not sure if Fordem is after a medal in recognition for his holyness?

I started out jack of all trades master of nothing. I'm now a web application developer. It pays better than support and you don't have to talk to morons all day (only some of the day).