Streamline your Win2K network by disabling NetBT
Bit by bit, I'm leaving my preWindows 2000 network behind. I took a big step forward recently after I realized that my Win2K network was still supporting NetBIOS over TCP/IP (NetBT). Because NetBT is a fairly chatty protocol, I figured that using only DNS would speed up my network. (And it did, quite a bit.) So, I disabled NetBT on my servers and most of my workstations. Here's what I learned.
Disabling NetBT
To disable NetBT manually, right-click My Network Places and choose Properties to display the computer's TCP/IP properties. (You can use DHCP to disable NetBT on a system, but that process requires a fairly lengthy explanation, so I'll leave it for another day.) In the Network and Dial-up Connections window, you'll see an object for each network card on your system. Right-click the network card for which you want to disable NetBT, then choose Properties. On the Properties page, double-click the Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) object, then click Advanced on the Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) Properties page. Click the WINS tab, then click the Disable NetBIOS over TCP/IP radio button. Clear the Enable LMHOSTS lookup check box, then click OK until you've closed the pages. To verify that you've killed NetBT, you can type
ipconfig /all
on a command line. You'll see a line confirming that NetBT is disabled.
You can disable NetBT on a few systems without affecting your other computers, except of course that those other computers won't be able to use NetBIOS to communicate with the systems on which you've disabled NetBT. After you disable NetBT, you can shut down the Computer Browser service to recover some memory and simplify your system's software. If you don't do so, the Computer Browser service will eventually get tired of not being able to retrieve browse lists and will shut itself down.
Working Without Browsing
Shutting off NetBT greatly reduces the network's browsing functionality because the Computer Browser—the service manifested in Network Neighborhood, My Network Places, and the Net View command—sits atop NetBIOS. A machine on which you've disabled NetBT can't retrieve the workgroup browse list for a Windows NT 4.0 domain, nor can the machine retrieve the list of shares from a pre-Win2K server. And under no circumstances can that system use the Net Use command to access a share on a pre-Win2K server.
But browsing doesn't disappear altogether. You can still browse shares on another Win2K or later system. For example, suppose your workstation is part of an Active Directory (AD) domain named acme.com. If you type any of the following commands:
net view
net view /domain:acme.com
net view /domain:acme
you'll get the message There are no entries in the list. In other words, the Net View command can't list the servers in the domain. Similarly, if you open My Network Places and navigate to Entire Network, then go to the icon that represents your domain's workgroup, you'll find the list of servers empty. But if you happen to know the name of the Win2K server (the server must be a Win2K server; you can't attach to any shares on a pre-Win2K OS after you turn NetBT off), you can use the Net View command to list its shares without NetBT's help. For example, if you know that acme.com has a server named Bigserver, you can type
net view bigserver.acme.com
to list its shares. Notice that you don't need to type two backslashes (\\) before the server name—the server's DNS name is sufficient.