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IRIS

Instructional & Research Information Systems

Lars Rohrbach

Retiring Windows Internet Naming Service (WINS)

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Windows Internet Name Service (WINS) is a legacy computer name registration and resolution service from Microsoft that maps computer NetBIOS names to IP addresses, and is implemented on our network with the machines wins1.eecs.berkeley.edu and wins2.eecs.berkeley.edu. Computers generally use DNS (Domain Name System) now, and most organizations stopped using WINS years ago.

We are planning to (finally) retire this legacy service on the following schedule:

  • Tuesday, August 8: remove configuration of WINS servers from EECS Domain Controllers, and from our NetApp fileservers. We don’t think any clients should notice this change, but we’ll be on the lookout for any issues that come up.
  • Tuesday, August 15: update DHCP to no longer specify WINS servers to DHCP clients. DHCP clients should have their network info updated over the next day or so, but will continue to resolve hostnames via DNS. So in general, we expect clients should notice no change. However, if your Windows client is relying on a shared Windows resource from a machine without a fixed IP name (for example, a shared lab printer attached to a Windows PC), you may lose access to that resource. Access to home.eecs, project.eecs, and printers on print.eecs will not be affected.
  • September 1-30: We will monitor any remaining WINS client traffic to wins1.eecs and wins2.eecs, and attempt to notify registered sysadmins to update clients accordingly.
  • Tuesday, October 3: turn off WINS.

We expect few people to be affected by the retirement of WINS, but if you do have a problem after one of the changes, feel free to contact the Helpdesk with any details.

Sporadic Windows Authentication Errors

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Since Thursday, March 16, we have received some reports of Windows authentication errors, usually experienced during login to Windows after a fresh reboot or at the lock screen. A common error indicated “The trust relationship between this workstation and the primary domain failed.” Temporarily disabling the network, when possible, allowed one to login as normal (using cached credentials).

We found some Active Directory replication issues that may be at fault, and are working to rebuild one of our domain controllers. If you encountered the above error after 3pm today, March 21, please feel free to notify help@eecs with any specifics.

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