Network Neighborhood browsing (was Re: [pptp-server] Connected, but not browsing.)

[Patrick J. LoPresti]

> 1. the network neighborhood works via NETBIOS over TCP/IP.. It
> broadcast these packets to the network.

UDP I think.

> Q. will these packets make it down the VPN tunnel to the poptop
> server? My initial thoughts are *no*. I will do some tests on this
> in a few days.

Correct.

> 2. The linux poptop server won't send these broadcast packets over
> the ppp link.. so we will have to send them manually.

I think that will be hard.  You will need to hack pppd, since
inserting packets in the PPP stream without pppd's knowledge is
dangerous (and impossible for an encrypted link?).

> Ahh.. I don't know enough about it yet. I'm looking for lots of
> input. If I get a good idea of what needs to be done I'll sit down
> and hack it together.

> Or is there an easier solution.

Use a WINS server.  If your MickeySoft boxes are configured to use a
WINS server, they will register themselves with it directly.  The WINS
server will create a "browse list" which can be obtained by any
machine (e.g., the PPTP client) without the use of broadcast.

Three things you need to do:

  1) Have a WINS server (see Samba's "wins server" parameter).

  2) Configure your local Windows machines to use it.  DHCP can do
     this for you, or you can set it manually on each machine in
     Network Properties.  (This may not be necessary if the WINS
     server is reachable reached via broadcast; it may collect the
     browse list automatically.  Not sure.)

  3) Set the "ms-wins" parameter in /etc/ppp/options to point to your
     WINS server.  This will tell your PPTP client how to reach it.

  4) OK, I lied about there being three things.  Play around with
     various "workgroup" and "domain logon" settings on the PPTP
     client until it decides it belongs to the workgroup.  I haven't
     figured out exactly what magic combination works; it would be
     great to nail this down and document it.

Well, this works for us, anyway.

 - Pat