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JohnHTexas

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 5, 2011
1
0
Our church has been historically a Windows environment, and we currently are running several Windows 2003 servers in a network environment. DNS and DHCP are both installed to the 2003 server domain controller.

Though we have had a few Macs on the network for several years, we are expanding considerably in the Mac arena. A problem I have run into pertains to DNS. From a Mac, I can ping the domain controller by IP address and receive appropriate replies; however, when I ping by its Netbios name I get no DNS resolution, so the host cannot be found. I have tried a number of troubleshooting steps as follows:

  1. Made sure AppleTalk was enabled on the server's network card
  2. Firewall is disabled on the server
  3. On the Mac's network settings I verified the correct DNS server is listed
  4. On the Mac network settings, WINS tab set the workgroup to the network
  5. On the Mac's network settings, DNS I tried adding a Search Domain entry that is the same as the workgroup setting

Interestingly, when I open a Finder window and click ALL under the SHARED section I can see all computers including the server as listed by Netbios name. I can click and connect to the server and its resources, but I cannot ping it by Netbios. Just doesn't make sense. By the way, I can ping the server by netbios name from a PC. It is only the Mac machines that cannot resolve the name, so that is why I think it to be a DNS issue. Just not sure where to go at this point to fix the problem.

Thanks for any help provided.

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ADDITIONAL INFO
I found a document that provided help. In the Search Domain field I appended the domain name with ".local," and I can now ping by netbios name.
 
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