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Forum Discussion
Windows 10, mapping drive unreliable, slow or fails
I have had onging issues with mapping drives to or accessing my NAS (OS 6.9.3) since switching to Windows 10. Each update to Win 10 aggravated the problem with the latest update to 1803 making the pr...
schumaku wrote:
There is nothing like a NetBIOS name resolution over DHCP. Let's break down things a little bit...
This is the setting I was talking about. By default, DHCP tells Windows whether to enable NetBIOS over TCP/IP or not. This is a "Vendor Class" option. I have no idea whether Netgear routers do this, but none of them expose a setting for it. I agree this setting isn't the same as NetBIOS name resolution over DHCP - I mis-spoke above.
schumaku wrote:
2. If your Windows systems struggle to discover or run the WS-Discovery based name resolution, something is wrong. This does indicate there is a problem with IP Multicast on the (W)LAN.
Maybe. Or there's an interoperability issue between Microsoft and Debian Linux, or a bug in the NAS or Windows.
What I do know is that I've seen lots of discovery issues posted here, and occasionally seen them myself. I've also seen them posted on other forums (often ReadyNAS isn't involved). Printer discovery is related, and that's certainly not perfect either. Sometimes the issues are only in the network tree shown in file explorer, sometimes they are more basic Often they occur on some PCs on the network, and other near-identical PCs work fine. Often failures are intermittent. I've never a clear explanation from Microsoft on how to resolve this, but I've seen plenty of complaints.
Personally I reached the conclusion log ago that the Windows IP stack is just somewhat broken in this area. My NAS have reserved IP addresses, and my pattern is simply to use them. So perhaps it's working perfectly on my current network, perhaps not.
StephenB, a litle excursion into our common history (as I know we're about in the same generation):
That DHCP vendor option (and the still available controls on the interface properties) is used to disable NetBIOS over TCP/IP - so NBF (NetBIOS Frame Protocol) would be used instead - as it was in the good old times of 3com/Microsoft LAN Manager / IBM LAN Server et all doing communication using 802.2 LLC (link layer control) protocol. There were similar alternate protocols be used, ie. Novell NetWare NetBIOS-over-IPX/SPX, or Digital Equipment Corp. LAST (Local Area System Transport) - as on old DECie I have to pint out that we won any performance comparisons back at these golden times. As all this is history, that DHCP vendor option as well as the controls to disable NetBIOS over TCP/IP have no relevance - as NetBIOS over TCP/IP is still core. As NetBIOS discovery and name resolution was not routable, WINS was introduced as a helping hand between networks. Just the NetBIOS host announcement and name resolution was defined obsolete along with the Microsoft phase-out of SMB 1.0/CIFS (still required for legacy NAS, Netgear ReadyShare, ...) and replaced by WS-Discovery.
We have some ~100 various storage systems announcing theself by NetBIOS (the legacy stuff) or WSD (the current NAS OS from Asustor, Netgear, QNAP, Synology, ...) and many network devices/printers doing SSDP in the playground - when bringing a Windows 10 system into that LAN (by WLAN or LAN), all these devices/services show up within a few seconds maximum. The only devices which don't show up (neither as a NetBIOS announcement [no idea why, some Netgear ODM engineers peeked and poked around remotely but were not able to figure out] nor by WSD [still not implemented] are Netgear's Nighthawk router ReadyShare (while the related UPnP SSDP announcement show up correct and in time).
The "everyday" network is built on Netgear XSxxxT and GC (Insight managed), plus some XSxxxE/GSxxxE (like the XS724E or GS110EMX) for edge usage switches, some standalone managed WAC730, and a bunch of WAC505/510 all in AP mode representing a typical SMB environment. Another network is built based on a R9000, GS808E (S8000), GS810EMX (SX10) and GS908E so a "consumer" class network linking in on alternate interfaces to a bunch of NAS, too [and psst, some edge networks for testing say powerline are linked up over a VLAN on the core network].
On all these, we can ad-hoc switch our Windows 10 physical machines or test VMs - the NetBIOS, WSD, and SSDP pop-up very reliably. There is a litle impact if the Windows 10 system virtual memory usage is high, NetBIOS devices can become cumbersome to be visible in Explorer.
My own home network is currently using an Orbi for the router (RBK50), with several switches. The core switch is a GS728TPv2; the RN524x and RN526x are connected to an XS708e (since they use 10 gigabit). One PC also has a 10 gig card, and is connected to that switch. As I noted, I haven't tried to seriously troubleshoot Win10 WSD with SMB 1.0 disabled, because all the PCs access the NAS using desktop shortcuts that use the IP address of the main NAS (the RN526x).
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