I came across an interesting issue today that I don't full understand.  Note this occurs in a lab environment for students.

On a Server2012R2 server, we have deployed a printer via group policy.  It would not show up on other Server2012R2 servers under devices and printers, even though gpresult showed it as deployed.  After doing some researching, I found that DNS and Netbios name had been brought up a lot with the error "Windows cannot connect to the printer."

I changed the Server names to something less than the 15 character netbios max length.  After doing so, it all started working.  The thing is I don't understand why.  Does Netbios play a role in group policy deployment?  Why would deployment fail based on the length of the machine name?  Any thoughts are much appreciated.

Thank you.