samba - Dec 2005 - WINS and isolating groups

Hi guys,

I'm planning a fileserver for around 12 small companies (two to five
people each) who share one buidling/office and all IT resources.

Since I'm not responsible or involved in the client support, I want to
prevent the different companies from seeing each other's PCs through
network browsing, for example, company A consists of Joe, Mary and Pete,
and Company B consists of Gary, Willy and Sue.   Members of Company A,
when they open their "Network neigbourhood" shouls see only Joe, Mary,
Pete and Server, and members of Compayn B should on see Gary, willy Sue
and Server.

Is this possible?  I have read of a WinNT4 setting - Wins scope (or
something like that) but I can't find something similar in samba's
manpages.

This will not be a domain controller, just a file server.

Thanks
Hans

> Is this possible?  I have read of a WinNT4 setting - Wins scope (or
> something like that) but I can't find something similar in samba's
> manpages.
I have a feeling that option is to do with connecting multiple WINS
servers together.

Given that Windows hosts also communicate via broadcasts, I think the
only way to do this would be to put each company on a different
subnet.  I don't know whether this means you have to run a different
instance of Samba for each subnet or whether one server can work across
all subnets, but I think a subnet division is the only way to stop the
broadcasts from working (and thus you won't need a WINS server at all.)

Cheers,
Adam.