Sorry, didn't noticed your first point about being appliances... Well, besides the broadcast, one
other way to resolve names in NetBIOS was using it's "dns" service, the WINS. I supose that those
appliances, if they support NetBIOS, must have a place to enter a WINS server, and for now, I think
that using a wins server is the only way to solve your problem... Even if you could forward the
netbios broadcasts, I don't think it would work, since that system was made for name resolution (or
in practical terms, discovery) on the same subnet, and you want to make the discover in diferent
subnets.
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Rhys Frederick 
  To: David Meireles | InforChannel, Lda 
  Sent: Wednesday, June 25, 2008 10:41 PM
  Subject: Re: [m0n0wall] NetBIOS broadcast forwarding


  Hi David,

  thanks, but as noted these are not PCs - they are appliances. They
  have no capability other than NetBIOS UDP broadcasts - no DNS, no host
  files.

  BTW, adding entries to the host files or using DNS, even if supported,
  does not solve the problem. NetBIOS UDP broadcasts are used as a
  discovery protocol, not a name resolution protocol. A name resolution
  protocol works if you already know the name of the server you want to
  get to, a discovery protocol helps you find what servers are out there
  when you dont know. A message is sent out and the netBIOS stack waits
  to see who responds.

  cheers,

  rhys

  2008/6/25 David Meireles | InforChannel, Lda <dmeireles at inforchannel dot com>:
  > Well, if the pc's are running something like Win2000, Xp or Vista, you can
  > disable the NetBIOS and use only DNS (and since m0n0wall registers the DHCP
  > leases in the DNS, you'll have your work done). But, it the pc's are running
  > something old (Win9x or NT4.0), tehm you can't disable NetBIOS, but you can
  > do a trick... I supose that those servers have fixed IP addresses... You can
  > add an entry for each one of them at the C:\windows\hosts (Win9x) or
  > c:\winnt\system32\drivers\etc\hosts (WinNT) because that is where they'll
  > search after netbios resolution has failed...
  >
  > ----- Original Message ----- From: "Rhys Frederick"
  > <rhys dot frederick at gmail dot com>
  > To: <m0n0wall at lists dot m0n0 dot ch>
  > Sent: Wednesday, June 25, 2008 6:48 AM
  > Subject: [m0n0wall] NetBIOS broadcast forwarding
  >
  >
  >> Hi all,
  >>
  >> apologies if this has been answered before. A search of the archives
  >> reveals plenty of related queries, but i've yet to stumble upon a
  >> solution.
  >>
  >> I am unfortunately having to deal with the inadequacies of MS's
  >> NetBIOS browsing implementation. For those of you lucky enough not to
  >> know it, in simple terms finding peers and servers is performed by
  >> sending a broadcast packet to UDP 137. Fine if everything is on the
  >> same subnet, not so fine for anything more.
  >>
  >> In my setup servers are firewalled from clients via m0n0wall on a
  >> soekris 5501 (as it happens these two subnets are actually 2 VLANs on
  >> the same interface, but guessing that doesn't help). Obvious problem
  >> is that clients cannot find the servers (broadcast packets are dropped
  >> at the firewall as it is not usual to route them). That said, this is
  >> such a common problem that many routers support routing UDP 137
  >> broadcast packets. I'm wondering if there is any way m0n0wall can be
  >> configured to do the same. FYI, I'm using m0n0wall 1.3b11.
  >>
  >> Alas I cannot use WINS as some of the clients are simple appliances
  >> with no WINS support - it's netBIOS browsing or nothing.....
  >>
  >> Any help much appreciated.
  >>
  >> cheers,
  >>
  >> rhys
  >>
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