Master Browser and VLANS?

I am trying to fix "My Network Places". We have a few vlans but 2 that I
really care about for the browsing. I have a dc on each of these vlans.
I currently don't get my network places updated across the vlans. There is
a cisco router between the vlans.
How can I get the master browser settings right? I have the
"ISDOMAINMASTER" regkey set to TRUE on one of the dc's and this is the one
with the pdc emulator role.
On the other dc in the other vlan I have that key set to auto.
What is going wrong here?

 

This is not a VLAN problem. Do you have any ACL's on the layer3 portion of
your router/switch? If not, look else where for the problem. We have 100's
of vlans and browsing is just fine.

 

The only way to get the master browser settings correct is
to leave them alone believe it or not. You don't have to have
a preffered master by changing the isdomainmaster setting to
true. The PDC is always the DMB or domain master browser
as well as the SMB or segment master browser by default.
The DMB is responsible for merging the domain wide list by
gathering the local lists from all SMBs as wells querying other
DMBs for their lists. In a routed tcp/ip environment this is a
bit tricky so you will need to provide more details of your
physical setup as well as protocols running and methods of
name resolution.

 

OK,
I have multiple vlans
10.10.10.x
10.10.20.x
etc
I have a dc on the .20 and one on the .30
There is a cisco switch between the subnets
I know the CISCO IP Helper is not turned on and have read various things
about it being good or bad to turn on. I know we don't want to enable
broadcast traffic across the vlans.
We have a dns/wins server running on each of these dc's that are on the .30
and .20 subnet.
The wins and dns replicate and dns is ad intergrated.

 

Also, we just are TCP/IP we don't have any thing else (that I am aware of) I
will check with the network guy that controls the routers but he isn't sure
what we need to do to get these browsers talking.
But why are all the clients promoting themselves?

 

Hi,
I just noticed as well that the dc on the .20 subnet believe it is the
domain master browser, now how can that happen if the .30 machine is the one
with the pdce role?
Shouldn't that just be a backup?

 

So you have machines missing in the browse list or entire vlans missing?
Big difference. Is it possible some clients are blocking NetBIOS via
a personal firewall of some sort?

 

You shouldn't have to enable IP Helpers of any kind on the router.

 

Correct, the NetBIOS helper forwards broadcast packets
across the routers which creates incomplete browse lists by
having clients register with remote SMBs instead of their local
SMB.

 

thanks, so how can I find out why the dc2 machine is not updating dc1-the
pdc with the proper list? I think there is some sort of communication issue
with the browsing because I only have this issue and all other tests are
fine
I have run dcdiag, netdiag, etc and all tests pass.

 

You can verify they are communicating e.g., map to a share

 

Looks like something is blocking NetBIOS, either locally on the
servers or your router.