PCs not seen in 'network'

[garethsnaim]

Sorry for my dim post here, I am not very windows savvy being a mac man.

Never the less we do have pcs on the network and debian boxes, all dishing out SMB shares.

Usually when I goto an explorer window and click on 'network' on the left hand side all the PCs and other shares on the network show up as individual icons. Now however sometimes only two but typically only the local PC shows up.

All these shares are available, I can ping them and indeed connect to them via windows if I type int he address but they do not show in network, this is tru on all the PCs.

All thats changed in my set up is I swapped out an AC68U for an AC78U

Both run merlin.

Is there a setting or anything I can do to get this going again, ok its not the end of the world, but its a bit of a PITA

 

[RMerlin]

Sorry for my dim post here, I am not very windows savvy being a mac man.

Never the less we do have pcs on the network and debian boxes, all dishing out SMB shares.

Usually when I goto an explorer window and click on 'network' on the left hand side all the PCs and other shares on the network show up as individual icons. Now however sometimes only two but typically only the local PC shows up.

All these shares are available, I can ping them and indeed connect to them via windows if I type int he address but they do not show in network, this is tru on all the PCs.

All thats changed in my set up is I swapped out an AC68U for an AC78U

Both run merlin.

Is there a setting or anything I can do to get this going again, ok its not the end of the world, but its a bit of a PITA

Enable Master Browser on the router (under USB -> Windows File Sharing), and make sure everyone is in the same workgroup.

 

[garethsnaim]

OK but I am refering to the multiple PCs on the network seeing each other, not the drive on the router.

Others have suggested netbios?

Never the less I have turned it on.

 

[garethsnaim]

Yea that sorted it thanks Merlin!

 

[RMerlin]

Yea that sorted it thanks Merlin!

In a workgroup environment, there's an election held to chose one client that will act as the master browser. That client is responsible for keeping the list of clients on the workgroup, so you can browse the list of computers by their names. Elections are weighted, so clients will always lose to servers. If whoever wins the election has a misconfigured firewall, name resolution won't work on your network, as other clients will be unable to connect to it.

Forcing the router to win the election prevents that issue, ensuring the router always wins that election, and handles all browser duties on your entire LAN.