How to set WINS through GPO?

Question

I'm looking to set our WINS servers via GPO, is that possible? We have 2 SSID which our clients can connect to (one which connects to a DHCP we control, the other to a different DHCP we don't - each with their own WINS).

We do a lot of mapping via DFS so that's why we need our wins servers.

Help?

Solution 1

The command for setting WINS is below:

Netsh interface ip set wins name="Local Area Connection" source=static addr=192.168.100.3

There is a netsh wins command as well, but that is for Winsock. Lost some time on that one before...

Also, if you are setting WINS on the wireless connection, the name will be different of course. Just run ipconfig to see what the name should be. It needs to be exact as far as I know.

Solution 2

There's no direct mechanism to assign a WINS server via GPO, unfortunately. When you can't assign the WINS server via DHCP, your best bet would be to do this via a logon script using the netsh command.

Solution 3

Group policy is not the mechanism to set network configurations. DHCP already has that covered. If you are having a problem using wins (I presume because for some reason you cannot replicate to the other wins server) I would instead use dns. See How DFS Works in Environments Without WINS

Comments

[Ragunath Venkatesan]

+1 Thank you for the explination and command example!

[Ragunath Venkatesan]

+1 Thank you for a clear and concise answer!