IT'S TRUE - Win95 Net Browsing causes DNS lookups

Lee Howard faxguy at server.deanox.com
Sun Jun 4 06:37:00 UTC 2000


This seems sooooo wrong to me.  My understanding of Microsoft Networking
was that the "Network Identification Computer Name" had nothing to do with
the DNS host name of a system.  In fact, they're distinctly different
fields in the network configuration utility.

However, (try this at home folks its lots of fun)... if you:
1) have a LAN with Windows 95/98 machines with DNS enabled in TCP/IP
properties
2) have root access to your DNS server
3) open Network Neighborhood on one Win9x system so that you can see the
others
4) turn off one of those other systems (let's call it's NetID Computer Name
SECRETARY)
5) turn on querylog on the DNS server
6) double-click SECRETARY on your Win9x system
7) watch things spin for a second and then see Win9x complain that
SECRETARY is down
8) turn off querylog on the DNS server (let's avoid an undue amount of
logging here)
9) take a look at those logs on the DNS server
10) you will see queries for SECRETARY.domain.com coming from your Win9x box.

I have confirmed this behavior with Windows 95C and Windows 98SE, and I
have confirmed that Windows 2000 Pro does *not* do this.

This is horrible, if you ask me.  That's like looking in a phone book for
"Buba" Martinez when his real name is Eduardo.  Yeah, you might get lucky,
but as long as the names come from two different places, the chances of
them being distinctly different is grave.  It *really* stinks because if
you don't control your DNS and your domain DNS is controlled by a dingbat
who has got lame servers and poor named configuration things you have to
wait even longer for an error reply back... and this problem can get
*quite* compounded (believe me) if you're using a proxy server as *your*
DNS that is using the same domain name as the lame servers.  I've had this
problem take drop a proxy server of mine for 1/2 hour as it fought over the
problem before it finally timed-out.

Does anybody know *why* this happens?  Not like we can fix Microsoft's boo
boos any... (or can we?)
See my test logs below...

Lee Howard

Jun  3 23:57:16 server named[3687]: XX+/209.197.23.237/LINK.deanox.com/A/IN
(this is from a Win95C system)
Jun  3 23:58:10 server named[3687]: XX+/209.197.23.195/LINK.deanox.com/A/IN
(this is from a Win98SE system)




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