I have just used several RB532 boards as LAN wifi routers. Ether1 is used as the WAN port and goes to an ADSL modem. ether2 is plugged into the LAN switch and bridged to wlan1.
PC’s connected via the wireless can’t access windows shares by name (ie \server\share). all works ok if IP addresses are used (ie \10.0.0.1\share).
Is there a way to pass the netbios host info between bridged interfaces?
if ask me - i allways disable windows netbios protocol and use ip address, and never.
on the other hand bridge should forward all ports and stuff through, check your firewall for settings that could disable netbios
I removed all firewall settings just to check, but it made no difference. I am sure it isn’t a wireless problem because when I add ether 3 to the bridge - netbios info doesn’t pass between ether2 and ether3…
Youhave to use WINS server if you want to see full functionality of the windows networking.
If you just want to replace IP’s with coumputer names, then place static enties in local DNS.
The Static DNS entries are a good idea for a “work around”, Explaining to customers they have to manually add every new machine when they can buy an AP for $25.00 that will do it right out of the box is a bit tricky…
So what does that $25 AP do different in your opinion? What algorithm or technique does it provide that a RouterOS based AP with a correct bridging setup would not offer?
–Tom
Tom, I did not intend to indicate that any $25.00 home user AP could do things that MT OS can’t. I have just over 120 MT licenses and I think it is a great OS. The point I was making was that static DNS entries was a good “work around” or “quick fix” to get the customer off my back, but there must be a setting somewhere that I am missing. My reasoning for thinking this is that at one sight they have an old Edimax AP that works between the LAN and WLAN as I had intended the MT box to.
There is 17 PC’s in the office and 4 are Laptops. If I plug the laptops physically into the lan with a network cable, they can access the server by simply using \sever\share. If they connect via the generic wireless AP they can also access shares in this way. If, However they access the network via the MT WLAN (bridged to an ethernet port that is connected to the LAN Switch), they can only access shares by IP address \10.0.0.1\
Conclusion - there must be something in MT OS that I havn’t configured correctly - Hence my post on the Forum 
The same problem with my network! Difference is that I have PC based MT and two ethernet card in bridge mode - I have the same problems with netbios in the bridged interfaces 
I havn’t yet resolved it - MT support told me to turn on RSTP - but it did not fix the problem - I am sure it is nothing to do with the hardware platform, but rather the MT OS. I have tested on x86 systems RB530 RB153 RB230 and RB112, betwewn wired interfaces and wired to wirelesss etc - If you find out how to make it work - please please please post it here - I would be most grateful.
it’s because Mikrotik doesn’t support multicast and netbios uses those packets to discover each other.
the only solution is to use wins server or domain controller.
As it should be. MT is great OS and should not be spoilt be something like this. Most uses of MK dictates that netbios should NOT be forwarded and I will be mighty disappointed if it did.
Install a WINS server or domain controller. Else use lmhost in the advanced network settings on a desktop on each pc to resolve IPs to a server or desktop on the other bridged network and make certain that netbios over tcp/ip is enabled.
It is stupid. If I pay for the license then I must implement all I want to do. I do not have to use WINS or DOMAIN server for a small home-use network. Also in some case I do not know the dynamic host configurations to list them in LMHOST. Of course NetBios is not the preferred choice but let be an option to enable this, or to disable and if someone needs of NetBios redirection to enable it.
If you do not forward some protocols like NetBios then why you call the connection “BRIDGE”? That way it is not fully usable bridge for me!
Netbios doesn’t use multi-cast for name resolution, in the absence of DNS, WINS or LMhosts it will use broadcast.
Regards
Andrew
Not sure if this will help you, but here is my experience and the fix.
setup - RB530
ether1 - PPPoE session to ISP
Bridge1 (Wlan1+ether2+ether3)
all windows machines connected to ether2,3 or wlan1 could connect to each other via IP address. Connection by host name was only possible between windows machines connected to the same interface (ie machines on ether1 ould talk to other machines on ether 1 but not on ether2 or wlan1). No amount of static DNS entries on the MT box or LMHOSTS entries made any difference.
In the end I discovered that the NAT rule used to NAT all internet traffic out through the PPPoE session was missing an outgoing interface.
the outgoing rule I was using was
0 ;;; LAN
chain=srcnat src-address=192.168.0.0/24 action=masquerad
the rule that finally fixed my problems was
0 ;;; LAN
chain=srcnat out-interface=netspace ADSL1 src-address=192.168.0.0/24 action=masquerade
What was happening was the NAT rule was Masquerading between the three bridge interfaces resulting in IP traffic being passed, but NetBIOS traffic being blocked.
Thank you very much sir. This issue has come up in various posts and Mikrotik has been unable to say what was the cause or able to suggest a fix up to now.