Re: Nettscreen VPN problem

From: Alec (alec@nospam.com)
Date: 10/17/02 

From: "Alec" <alec@nospam.com>
Date: Thu, 17 Oct 2002 12:19:22 -0500

The "Computer Browser" service can fail for quite a few reasons and can be
troublesome to diagnose. I'm no expert, but my understanding is that the
Computer Browser service was designed in the days of NetBIOS and relies upon
netbios name resolution and a bunch of broadcast packets in order to find
the "Domain Master Browser" or whatever it is called that contains the list
of resources on the network. That is, when a computer starts up supposedly
one of the things it does is send out a broadcast packet seeking the server
with the master browse list, that server responds, and then the newly
started computer sends back its name and a a list of shares, printers,
and/or other resources that it offers back to the server maintaining the
list. When someone uses the Computers Near Me functionality to request a
browse list, then the computer sends a request out to that same server
maintaining the browse list. There is even a "master browser" election
process that takes place behind the scenes if the master browser fails for
some reason.

Anyway, one of the points that has been made to me is that because the
process often relies upon broadcast packets, it often does not work
correctly over routers or any other type of equipment which is not going to
forward broadcast packets. There ARE ways around this, but I'm afraid that
you are going to have to research the issue on MSDN probably. I believe that
someone told me that if you have WINS enabled and the client machine on the
remote network is configured with the address of the WINS server, then
supposedly everything works. I think that the network admin can even
configure it such that a DHCP server will automatically forward on the IP
addresses of any WINS servers just like DHCP can automatically configure
clients with the IP addresses of DNS servers.

You might want to start researching the issue more here:

Troubleshooting the Microsoft Computer Browser Service
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q188305

Microsoft Windows NT Browser
http://www.microsoft.com/ntserver/techresources/commnet/browser/ntbrowser.as
p

But, I don't think its really a problem with your VPN/Firewall unit...
rather I think its just a pain in the *** to get browsing working properly
over WAN connections.

"Barry Strets" <Barrys2552@attbi.com> wrote in message
news:Swrr9.56799$gr6.57053@rwcrnsc53...
> I'm trying to setup a remote connection to our main office from a
traveling
> system. The firewall is a Netscreen 10, software version 3.0.1r3.0 and the
> VPN client version is 8.0. It seems to work execpt I can't browse the
> network from the remote system. I've gone over allthe setings and found
> several articles via google but still no solution.
>
> Any ideas????
>
> Barry Streets
> bstreets@echoman.com
>
>