Resolving NetBIOS name over VPN (Synology OpenVPN)

[thecomputerguy]

I've setup a couple clients to connect to their network via VPN, both of them are connecting to a Synology NAS using OpenVPN.

Using \\synologynas

Yields a connection error

using \\192.168.0.100

Connects normally

Is there any easy way to get the NetBIOS name to resolve so that I don't have to have to users manually re-map their drive map to the IP? It's not really a big deal to do that but I'm just wondering if there is a simple way to do so. I read some things about setting up a WINS server and I have no experience in doing that.

I know I could also manually code the hosts file to map the IP to the NetBIOS name but that process would be significantly more difficult for the client to do than just to simply remap the resource to the IP instead of NetBIOS name.

I'm mainly looking for simplicity here.

 

[Sky-Knight]

NetBIOS doesn't exist anymore. The name resolution process you're referring to happens via broadcast, and that dies with VPN or any other router based process.

There is only way to handle this, properly configured DNS. Don't have a DNS server? You're SOL. Use the IP address.

WINS? WTF is this 1990? Google is taking you to a dark place if you're barking up that tree.

 

[trevm999]

Lol, feels like deja vu, I'm sure we saw pretty much this exact question a few months ago.

Typically you configure the VPN to push DNS server IPs for the client to use so then the client can use DNS names.

I can't remember if that is something you can set via the Synology UI. You might have to manually edit the openVPN config and there is a comment or a file you create that tells Synology not to mess with your config.

 

[thecomputerguy]

NetBIOS doesn't exist anymore. The name resolution process you're referring to happens via broadcast, and that dies with VPN or any other router based process.

There is only way to handle this, properly configured DNS. Don't have a DNS server? You're SOL. Use the IP address.

WINS? WTF is this 1990? Google is taking you to a dark place if you're barking up that tree.

Got it ... yeah I believe their DNS is just using google DNS ... since they're in a workgroup.

I suppose I could install the DNS package from Synology and manually configure it there ... probably too much work though