Resolution of // netbios name over VPN for file share

Question

I work for a charity and we are using Active Directory & AIP etc... We have a VPN service. So when I am at home I can create a VPN tunnel into our internal network and AD etc.. When I am on the internal network & AD I can enter a name like //name to connect a file share and allocate a letter. However when I use the //name over the VPN tunnel it says it doesn' recognise the name. I believe the look up of names is hostfile then DNS then Netbios. I have made sure that sharing on my home PC is turned on. I am using Windows 11. I can't find any good articles that explain how the //names is resovled in Windows AD etc.. Can any one enlighten me so that I can solve this problem. Thanks

Answer 1

Hello,

You can try connecting to the file share using the IP address instead of the NetBIOS name. If NetBIOS names must be used, NetBIOS name resolution needs to be enabled on the VPN connection. You can enable NetBIOS over TCP/IP in the TCP/IP properties of the VPN connection. Additionally, to allow you to use a NetBIOS name over a VPN connection to connect to a file share, you can also create an LMHOSTS file on your local host that contains the NetBIOS name and the corresponding IP address.

Note, however, that these changes may require administrator rights to make.

If you want information about configuring and troubleshooting VPN device tunnels, you can refer to the following link:

Remote Access (VPN and AOVPN) Troubleshooting Guide - Windows Server | Microsoft Learn

Thanks,

Shujun