SMB and NETBIOS

when we attempt to connect the Mac's to the PC's via the PC's NETBIOS name (smb://yadayadayada), the only Mac's that can connect are the ones on the same subnet. Mac's on different subnets have to connect via the PC's computer name or it's IP address.

Actually, that seems like it is normal behavior judging from the following document:

Mac OS X 10.2 [or later]: Windows File Sharing (SMB) Computers Beyond Your Subnet Do Not Appear in Connect to Server Dialog

(Folks with more experience in this sort of thing: contributions of additional advice to Marc would be greatly appreciated.)

This is correct behavior.

When a computer browses the network for other machines, it will only be able to browse its local network. It is sending a broadcast message to everything it can see and asking for responses. Computers, servers and printers on the other side of a router are not seen because the routers will not pass the broadcast messages sent by the searching computer. If they did pass the broadcasts then the network could become saturated with traffic and slow down.

DNS or WINS is the service you're looking to use. Your Mac must be configured to use a DNS or WINS server and the computers you're trying to reach must have their names and IP addresses registered with a DNS or WINS server.

WINS (configured in the Directory Access utility in /Applications/Utilities) in a Windows world can give you the perception that you're seeing every computer on the network when browsing but you're really just querying the WINS server and it's returning a list of known computers.

If your company runs a directory service, such as Active Directory or Open Directory, then this can be used for browsing along with DNS.

Hope this helps! bill

1 GHz Powerbook G4 Mac OS X (10.4.9)

🙂 Excellent. Thank you kindly for the follow-up, bill!