Add a printer leads to massive Netbios broadcast

Hello, we have several sites in our company connected via WAN and some
behavior we're curious about. We can replicate this behavior by going
into Add a Printer on a PC (Windows XP), click 'next', click 'A network
printer', click next, click 'Connect to this printer' without entering
a name, then click next, and then, according to a network trace
(Ethereal), the PC will go out and locate every Windows server on the
network, looking for printers (enumprinters). (Also bumps up against
UNIX servers running Samba).

The above process takes several minutes of course, we have several
hundred Windows servers. We do not segment our network nor limit
netbios (or other) traffic internally because SMS needs to be able to
go out and discover devices.

Is this just 'the way things are meant to be', that is, when a user
adds a printer as in the case above, that their PC goes out and scans
the entire network looking for printers ? Is there some other method
or restriction other large networks use to prevent this from occurring
? Thank you !

If you ask to connect to a printer and don't enter a name, the wizard
tries to find all the available printers. That seems a pretty reasonable
this to do.

If you specify a printer, it will go straight to it.

(E-Mail Removed) wrote:
> Hello, we have several sites in our company connected via WAN and some
> behavior we're curious about. We can replicate this behavior by going
> into Add a Printer on a PC (Windows XP), click 'next', click 'A
> network printer', click next, click 'Connect to this printer' without
> entering a name, then click next, and then, according to a network
> trace (Ethereal), the PC will go out and locate every Windows server
> on the network, looking for printers (enumprinters). (Also bumps up
> against UNIX servers running Samba).
>
> The above process takes several minutes of course, we have several
> hundred Windows servers. We do not segment our network nor limit
> netbios (or other) traffic internally because SMS needs to be able to
> go out and discover devices.
>
> Is this just 'the way things are meant to be', that is, when a user
> adds a printer as in the case above, that their PC goes out and scans
> the entire network looking for printers ? Is there some other method
> or restriction other large networks use to prevent this from occurring
> ? Thank you !