When you have more than one domain and members of one domain need to browse resources in another, you can add other domains to the browser service.
Adding Domains Through Network Neighborhood
To add domains to a server, on the NT Server, right-click Network Neighborhood, select Properties, and switch to the Services Tab to bring up a dialog box similar to the one in Figure 5.14.
Double-click Computer Browser to bring up the dialog box shown in Figure 5.15.
Add the name of the domain that you want to make available to the Browser Service and click Add. In this example, I went to a browser on the FORETELL domain and added the FTL domain so that it was available to the Browser Service.
Adding Domains Using the Registry
Sometimes, you may want to allow the Browser Service on an NT Workstation to have the same capabilities as on a server. For example, you may have an NT Workstation that is a member of one domain, acting as a master browser in a remote network with no NT Servers. You may want the Windows 95 clients on that network to see other resources in that domain as well as in another domain. However, if you double-click the Computer Browser service on an NT Workstation, you receive the error message “Cannot configure the software component.”
To configure the workstation, you must modify its Registry. To do this, start your favorite Registry editor (such as REGEDT32) by clicking Start and Run. Locate and select the Registry key
Click Edit, Add Value, and add a value called OtherDomains with data type REG_MULTI_SZ, as shown in Figure 5.16.
Be sure to type the Value Name exactly as shown and select the Data Type REG_MULTI_SZ. Clicking OK automatically brings up the Multi-String Editor (Figure 5.17). Here, you can add domain names.
Other Browser-Related Registry Configuration
Most of the browser-related entries are available at the following Registry subkey:
Usually, we are concerned with the Parameters subkey; there, we usually find only MaintainServerList and IsDomainMaster values.
Tip: In most of the NT documentation related to the Browser Service, the terms workgroup and domain are used interchangeably, which is a bit confusing to anyone who follows the Microsoft definitions for a domain and workgroup. For example, the value IsDomainMaster is really meant for workgroups; it lets an NT Workstation or NT Server installed as a standalone server become the preferred master browser for that subnetwork. Similarly, the term server refers to any computer that may have the ability to serve a resource, including machines running Windows for Workgroups, Windows 95, NT Server, and NT Workstation, even though some of these computers may not be sharing any resources.
As we noted earlier, a number of Registry entries are not visible by default. These entries are listed in Table 5.6 with brief explanations and some comments. Some of these entries can be added manually, and others become visible when you run a command such as NET CONFIG SERVER.
According to the Registry documentation, only some of the values listed in Table 5.6 require you to reboot. However, we found that rebooting the system was required after changing any of the parameters.
Because applications do the browsing, some other entries that affect browsing are located in other areas of the Registry. For example, print browsing is controlled by entries in
By default, print servers are notified of the existence of a printer on a computer once every 10 minutes. If you have remote sites connected through ISDN lines or other demand-dial mechanisms, you may want to change the frequency of this update.
To disable the notification, set DisableServerThread to 1.
To increase the interval between update messages to the print servers, change the ServerThreadTimeout value from the default of 36000 ms (10 minutes) to 72000 ms (20 minutes).
Finally, we also want to point out potential problems related to browsing when you use NT computers that have more than one network card — multihomed workstations or servers. In general, multihomed computers are not good candidates as browsers because each network card and protocol combination results in a separate browse list. In the case of a PDC, which is also the domain master browser, this will result in incomplete browse lists being given to all master browsers communicating through the different network interfaces. If a master browser is multihomed and communicates with the PDC to provide the browse list, it will provide only the names that were collected from one of its network adapters. Again, this will result in incomplete browse lists at the PDC and the rest of the network won’t see the entire browse list. In the same vein, multihomed servers are not good candidates for backup browsers. To eliminate multihomed servers as master or backup browsers, you can modify the Registry entry MaintainServerList, described earlier.
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