Okay, I have my PB running wireless off a Belkin router. I have a Win98 machine connected to the network as well. What kind of setups/configurations do I need to make (on either machine) so I can see the Win98 machine in Finder/Network? In Finder/Network there's a Servers alias then in that is an alias to my machine, but not the Win98 machine? The Win98 machine has a firewall running but that doesn't prevent me from connecting. I can use Connect To Server (cmd-k) and type in the ip and connect that way, but that's just a pain. I have 10.3.3
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Detecting PC's on a Home Network
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So from reading all these posts in the 10.3.3 thread I saw where someone mentioned Workgroup and Directory Access. So I ran Directory Access and saw that SMB was configured to look under the workgroup "WORKGROUP". So I changed it to name of my network workgroup at home and I can now see the PCs on it.
My question is why do I have to specify the workgroup? What if I had more than one workgroup/network at home... would I have to change the SMB workgroup each time I want to access a machine on a different workgroup? I figured OS X would find all available workgroups then you could browse all the machines under those workgroups.. ??
My question is why do I have to specify the workgroup? What if I had more than one workgroup/network at home... would I have to change the SMB workgroup each time I want to access a machine on a different workgroup? I figured OS X would find all available workgroups then you could browse all the machines under those workgroups.. ??
Funny, I work all day on a windows network and i get all of the workgroups as folders under the network path no problem. Within each folder i can see all of the computers in each workgroup. Windows networking is a real mess and will take apple some time to clean up compatibility. I should note that I just turned EVERYTHING on in Directory Access to cover my bases and avoid forgetting something important.
As a side note, my wife's company just bought a Mac for their graphic arts work (their pc tech guy was practically afraid to even turn it on) and for some reason they can browse and login to the volume where their original graphics files reside but all of the original files inside are invisible to the mac, whereas other folders and network volumes work just fine. I'm still confused about that one....I'm blaming it in the windows networking guy there for now...
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Surfernate said:Funny, I work all day on a windows network and i get all of the workgroups as folders under the network path no problem. Within each folder i can see all of the computers in each workgroup. Windows networking is a real mess and will take apple some time to clean up compatibility. I should note that I just turned EVERYTHING on in Directory Access to cover my bases and avoid forgetting something important.
As a side note, my wife's company just bought a Mac for their graphic arts work (their pc tech guy was practically afraid to even turn it on) and for some reason they can browse and login to the volume where their original graphics files reside but all of the original files inside are invisible to the mac, whereas other folders and network volumes work just fine. I'm still confused about that one....I'm blaming it in the windows networking guy there for now...
Are you using WINS at work? If so, most of the workgroups/domains appear nicely. If you do not have a WINS server, then your machine relies on broadcasts across the network to populate computer lists, and that can be slow at times.
Well..I can see many other workgroups when i am on my schools network. BUt i havent really treid to access any comps in them as i dont have the password. But i guess one should be able to , coz it the smb commandcrees! said:
smb://workgroup_name;user_name@netbios_name
you specify the workgroup..so you can give anything , as long as your mac can 'see' it. But as i said , this is what i think, havnt tried it.
tomf87 said:
No we do not have a server here. I do not have the time or technical expertise at the moment. So, yes, we do rely on broadcast which works fine with a small number of workgroups and computers. It only takes a while to get organized the first time. After that it connects quickly because the Mac leaves it's own little file signature on each resource/directory that it has accessed.
In the other case it is a large school network with a "tightly" controlled server access structure. Nonetheless, you wouldn't believe how many people leave their systems wide open (even wirelessly!). I'm clearly no tech or hack and I can see how one could easily cause a lot of trouble just wandering around a laptop. [https://forums.macrumors.com/images/icons/icon12.gif]
![https://forums.macrumors.com/images/icons/icon12.gif]](https://forums.macrumors.com/images/icons/icon12.gif]){kind=link}
When a NetBIOS workgroup is initialized (eg. when the first computer with file/print sharing enabled and configured to a specific workgroup starts its network services), it becomes a NetBIOS name server for that workgroup. When subsequent computers with file/print sharing enabled and belonging to that workgroup start, they look for and report their services to the name server so the name server can keep track of the servers in the workgroup. Name servers in different workgroups talk to each other so they know of each other's existance, but they do not share server lists.
When your Mac starts and locates the name server for its workgroup, it requests and receives a list of servers in its workgroup which it displays when browsing the network, just like a Windows machine. When developing the network client software, you need to decide what to do with the workgroups to which your system does not belong.
Microsoft's method is to display all other workgroups as folders (a long standing complaint by many because all those workgroups can be really confusing for people browsing the network). It appears that Apple chose to ignore the other workgroups.
When your Mac starts and locates the name server for its workgroup, it requests and receives a list of servers in its workgroup which it displays when browsing the network, just like a Windows machine. When developing the network client software, you need to decide what to do with the workgroups to which your system does not belong.
Microsoft's method is to display all other workgroups as folders (a long standing complaint by many because all those workgroups can be really confusing for people browsing the network). It appears that Apple chose to ignore the other workgroups.
_The_Man_ said:
On the WinXP Machine, try disabling simple filesharing(a worthless feature!) (tools>folder options>view>go to bottom of list and uncheck 'use simple filesharing) and then add your Mac to the users and permissions dialogue (see help menu, I'm running out of time for this post...sorry!). Either that or just create a user named 'everyone' and allow full access if you can stomach the lack of security. If this doesn't fix it enable windows filesharing on the Mac and try to connect from the PC.
Also, make sure you are running 10.3.3 it includes a major improvement in SMB browsing.