From: "Frank Haber" 

This is all peer, no domains within miles.  These nets are thrown together
static-ip, mostly, with any dns relayed through a SOHO router to an ISP,
when the LAN is on the net, which isn't often.  No WINS, either.  I'd use
NETBEUI to help, except the XP one is pretty sluggish, and using the 2000
stack (recommended by some) leads to hangs at awkward times.

I have registry patches to force IsBrowseMaster, and that helps.  I
religiously clear router tables, and reboot lots, but these are ad hoc
collections of machines, slapped together under severe time pressure. 
Spiky RFI from kilowatts of HMI and Xenon lighting also makes life
miserable from the hardware side.

Laptops are a real fly in the ointment. Problem is, a lot of laptops now
have two NICs from the factory - wired and wireless.  MS's Wireless
Autoconfig got lots better with last year's patch, although still lacking
in control, with a namby-pamby Macintosh feel to it. Then Centrino came in,
and many vendors didn't like Intel's wireless mini-PCI solution, and/or
wanted G speed, and/or got their wireless cards from two vendors, sometimes
with half-baked proprietary software.  I usually turn wireless off, but it
still sometimes interferes.  Yup, disabled in Device manager and *with the
power switch off*, something poisonous still remains for a few boots.

Do you have any idea how *LONG* two or three XP reboots takes when the
network underpinnings have changed 100% from last time?  And it always
takes at least two to know whether you've fixed anything.  I've taken to
insisting on a day of prep, setting the whole thing up the day before.

I really should learn more about low-level Ether stuff - broadcast, discovery, etc.

--- BBBS/NT v4.01 Flag-5