We have Windows Server 2008 for Active Directory and DNS. We also have 18 VLANs in the network and users use Windows "My Network Places" for sharing. The problem is that users in different VLANs cannot see each other in "My Network Places." Does anyone know why?
2 Answers
Why? Because browsing the network relies on broadcast traffic, which is ususally blocked between networks at the routers that join/separate those networks. If you want to enable network browsing across networks you can do one of the following:
Allow broadcast traffic across the routers that join/separate these VLAN's.
Implement WINS
this is a normal behavoir, because the netbios names of computers listed in the network neighborhood are discoverd via broadcast. vlans segment the network in layer 2 into differrend lans and you need a router to build an access between vlans. the answer to your questions is that broadcasts are not transferd by the router from one interface to an other ( per example vlan 11 to vlan 12) because routers segment networks into differend broadcast domains