RE: WINS Proxy vs. Cisco IP Helper

["Carter, Gregory" <omni () dynmc net>]

Ya, I too have read that, and some who have already flamed me in personal email
obviously don't know the full capabilities of Cisco's IP helper forwarding on
the NetBIOS UDP multicast packets, which also allow browsing on the network from
multiple subnets without a WINS proxy on EACH subnet.

Just to clarify, my question here is for opinions on either implementation, I
KNOW how to implement them and that both will work.  I'm looking for an
experienced answer on this one.


Greg

+(Omni () Dynmc Net)------------------------------------------------------+
| Dynamic Networking Solutions                     InterX Technologies |
| Senior Network Administrator                bits/keyID 1024/7DF9C285 |
| omni () interx net omni () itstudio net omni () undernet org omni () webpop3 com |
+--------[  DC 50 57 59 C3 76 46 E8 EB 75 A8 94 FE 96 9E D3 ]----------+

-----Original Message-----
From: Roeland Meyer (E-mail) [mailto:rmeyer () mhsc com]
Sent: Tuesday, April 25, 2000 12:59 PM
To: 'Carter, Gregory'; nanog () merit edu
Cc: jrivera () stei com; srabalais () stei com
Subject: RE: WINS Proxy vs. Cisco IP Helper

If you want a really good discription of how WINS servers interoperate, see the
Smaba documentation/browsing.txt especially concerning WINS interactions across
sub-nets and sub-domains. It clarified stuff for me that the MS dox left very
muddied.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-nanog () merit edu [mailto:owner-nanog () merit edu]On Behalf Of
> Carter, Gregory
> Sent: Tuesday, April 25, 2000 12:26 PM
> To: 'nanog () merit edu'
> Cc: 'jrivera () stei com'; 'srabalais () stei com'
> Subject: WINS Proxy vs. Cisco IP Helper
>
>
>
> Greetings!
>
> I have a bit of a philosophical question regarding the use of
> a WINS Proxy
> versus using Cisco's IP Helper to forward UDP datagram
> packets off to a central
> WINS server.  Let me give some background to the setup of the
> company I work
> for.
>
> Currently we are noticing that we have too many WINS servers
> running throughout
> our divisions and some of our servers are corrupting the WINS
> database.  As a
> whole our IS divisional managers will be meeting soon and
> would like to discuss
> this situation and limit our WINS servers down to one per
> division.  We have a
> total of five divisions; the fifth is a central office where
> for the most part
> the whole company looks to as the head office.  Each division
> is also split up
> into regions, which usually have a hub site that is connected
> up to the division
> hub site then to our main hub site (the fifth division).  All
> of our locations
> are setup on frame relay and all of them have Cisco 1600
> routers.  Currently we
> have a WINS server at the division site, and two regions with
> WINS servers in
> them.  The Cisco routers use IP helper at our spoke sites to
> forward the UDP
> datagram packets from the local LAN of the spoke sites up to
> the WINS server for
> that region.  The regional WINS servers then push pull up to
> the division WINS
> server and the division WINS server push pulls up to the
> company's main hub site
> (fifth division) thereby syncing the entire company.
>
> By limiting the divisions to a single WINS server obviously
> the regional WINS
> servers will either need to go away or they will need to be
> replaced with WINS
> proxy servers that will proxy the requests back up to the
> divisional server.
>
> My concern is to whether it would be wiser for us to dump the
> regional WINS
> servers altogether and change IP helper to point back to the
> division WINS
> server instead, or to go ahead and shut down the regional
> WINS servers and
> replace them with WINS proxying.  I have come to the
> conclusion that either way
> would take the same amount of bandwidth, and as far as
> redundancy is concerned
> we can simply change the secondary WINS server address in
> DHCP to the main hub
> site's address.
>
> Does anyone here have a relevant opinion on this matter, or
> any reasons not to
> implement one or the other of the solutions?
>
> +(Omni () Dynmc Net)---------------------------------------------
> ---------+
> | Dynamic Networking Solutions                     InterX
> Technologies |
> | Senior Network Administrator                bits/keyID
> 1024/7DF9C285 |
> | omni () interx net omni () itstudio net omni () undernet org
> omni () webpop3 com |
> +--------[  DC 50 57 59 C3 76 46 E8 EB 75 A8 94 FE 96 9E D3
> ]----------+