WINS and DNS provide names resolution, which is the process of converting a computer name to an address. It is required to logon and to locate resources on the network. WINS converts internal NetBIOS names to IP addresses (NetBIOS name resolution) and DNS converts hostnames to IP addresses.
The Windows NT 4.0 name resolution process was by default (hybrid-mode) :
| NetBIOS name cache. |
| WINS |
| Broadcast |
| LMHOSTS |
| HOSTS |
| DNS |
The process depends on the WINS configuration. For more WINS name resolution details see summary WINS.
Windows 2000 by default tries to resolve host names first and will than try to resolve NetBIOS names. It the host name resolution fails and the requested name is longer than 15 characters, name resolution fails. If the requested name is less than 16 characters NetBIOS name resolution will start when activated on the client. The client can be modified to do NetBIOS name resolution first by creating the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet\Services\Tcpip\ParametersDnsNbtLookupOrder entry (Reg_Dword) with one of the following settings :
0 Name resolution goes first via DNS. (default)
1 Name resolution goes first via NetBIOS name resolution.
A caching resolver service is used to reduce to number of queries by using a cache functionality. The resolver is the DNS client service. The cache can be viewed via 'ipconfig /displaydns', it can be flushed via 'ipconfig /flushdns'. For more information about the DNS name resolution process see summary DDNS.
Last update : 14 November 2001