7.1 The 0x1D irty Little Secret

7.1 The 0x1D irty Little Secret

Master Browser Servers (which are described later in the book) register unique names with the suffix 0x1D . The WINS server will happily acknowledge such registrations and then drop them into a black hole and forget about them. When queried, the WINS server denies the existence of any 0x1D unique names. Nodes from one subnet can never know about the Master Browsers on other subnets, and there may be multiple nodes using the same unique 0x1D name .

B nodes are immune to this behavior, since they do not make use of NBNS services. If the NBT vLAN is operating in M or H mode, however, the Master Browser names will be unique within the local IP subnet only . The same name may be registered by another Master Browser on a separate subnet. Since the WINS server does not keep any record of 0x1D names, Master Browsers can only be located using a broadcast query, which means that P nodes can never find 0x1D names.

The strange handling of 0x1D names may be related to the lack of NBDD functionality. As you can see, an implementation that strays from the path will quickly find itself lost in a jungle of exceptions, special cases, and other yucky stuff from an old episode of "Outer Limits."