Network Problem with LabView Apparently Solved

After some packet sniffing we have determined that the delay we've been experiencing when querying the Agilent from the GUI has been due to gus flailing about looking for the Agilent via the WINS service. Can't say that I completely understand what's going on, but we verified that the delay goes away when we turn the NetBIOS service off.

Which would be all good, except that windows file sharing seems to depend on the NetBIOS service, thus we can't access the disk on gus without it.

So we added two lines in the host file on gus (located at C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\etc\hosts):

10.4.2.3 EXESAGILENT
10.4.2.1 bryce

This seems to cure the problem, presumably by heading the name resolution process off at the pass, before it resorts to the dysfunctional WINS service. WINS (a microsoft implementation of NetBIOS) apparently depends on the existence of a WINS server somewhere on the network. My hunch is that we have such a server somewhere on the usra network in N211, but that no such service runs on the SIL. So while we had thought our problem hinged on the availability of a network DNS, it might really have been WINS we were missing.

With the modified hosts file, we can leave NetBIOS working (thus file sharing) and still access the Agilent without a noticeable delay. Hopefully we haven't broken anything else in the process :)