CertiGuide to A+ (A+ 4 Real)  9  Chapter 14: Networks       9  What is a Network?            9  Protocol Standards

Domain Name System (DNS) 1 Name Resolution Using the Hosts File

There is a major difference between DNS naming conventions and Microsoft naming conventions. Whilst the sales department in DVB Technologies Corporation may have a DNS name of sales.dvb.com, its Microsoft NetBIOS name would simply be “sales”. The NetBIOS name is no more network friendly than its DNS counterpart is, and must still be translated into an IP address to be accessible on a network.

To solve the issue of resolving NetBIOS names to IP addresses, Microsoft provides a service called Windows Internet Naming Service, or WINS for short. WINS operates in a similar mechanism to DNS insofar as it returns IP addresses for a given “English” name when queried. However, WINS is not accepted for name resolution use on the Internet, it does not scale well and it is inferior to DNS in almost every aspect.

Should you need to configure a WINS server, click the Advanced tab in the TCP/IP properties dialog and select the WINS tab. You will be presented with something like Figure 436.

To configure, you simply add the IP addresses of the WINS servers to the list at the top of the dialog.

Domain Name System (DNS) 1 Name Resolution Using the Hosts File