NetBIOS name resolution from FreeBSD?

[Bruco]

So, I'm banging my head against this and the answer may be simple, but I'm not stumbling into it.

I have a FreeBSD 6.3 box that does some monitoring, arpwatch, ntop, etc. at work.

I'd like this box to be able to resolve NetBIOS names - we have a number of thin clients and other devices that do not register with DNS. From a Windows machine with NetBIOS over TCP/IP enable I'm able to ping these things by name. I want to be able to do the same with the FreeBSD box.

I assume I need nmbd for this. So I installed samba. I'm running nmbd by itself right now, as I don't need any file shares or anything. I let it run overnight, in fact. And still, I can't ping any nodes by NetBIOS name.

Here's what I believe is the relevant section of smb.conf:

# Windows Internet Name Serving Support Section:
# WINS Support - Tells the NMBD component of Samba to enable it's WINS Server
   wins support = no

# WINS Server - Tells the NMBD components of Samba to be a WINS Client
#	Note: Samba can be either a WINS Server, or a WINS Client, but NOT both
;   wins server = w.x.y.z

# WINS Proxy - Tells Samba to answer name resolution queries on
# behalf of a non WINS capable client, for this to work there must be
# at least one	WINS Server on the network. The default is NO.
;   wins proxy = no

# DNS Proxy - tells Samba whether or not to try to resolve NetBIOS names
# via DNS nslookups. The default is NO.
   dns proxy = no

Now, I do have WINS in the environment. So I tried pointing the WINS server setting to a Windows DC running WINS. Then I waited 20 minutes... and still nothing. No pinging of NetBIOS names.

I CAN, however, ping the FreeBSD box by name from Windows clients! But... that's not what I need, unfortunately.

So, what am I missing? Am I incorrect in my understanding of Windows networking? Does nmbd not provide the functionality I'm looking for? Am I likely just missing a simple configuration piece?

(By the way, if this should have gone into ports and packages, please move, and I apologize.)