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Network+ Study Guide (N10-003)

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WINS


Microsoft's definition of WINS is "An enhanced NetBIOS Name Server(NBNS) designed by Microsoft to eliminate broadcast traffic associated with the B-node implementation of NetBIOS over TCP/IP. It is used to register NetBIOS names and resolve them to IP addesses for both local and remote hosts." If a WINS server is configured, then name resolution requests are sent directly to it and in turn the WINS server will send the IP address to the requesting client. If the WINS server can't resolve the name for some reason, then it will use a broadcast to try to resolve the name. A secondary WINS server can be configured to prevent such situations. WINS is dynamically updated which gets rid of the need for lmhosts files. If a client is configured to use WINS then it will register it's name and IP address with the WINS server. When the computer is turned off, it releases its lease on that name which may be used by a different computer. With Windows 2000, Microsoft has introduced Dynamic DNS (DDNS) which may be the beginning of the end for WINS and NETBIOS.