Tech Talk

Windows Internet Name Service (WINS) provides a distributed database for registering and querying dynamic mappings of NetBIOS names for computers and groups used on your network. WINS maps NetBIOS names to IP addresses and was designed to solve the problems arising from NetBIOS name resolution in routed environments. WINS is the best choice for NetBIOS name resolution in routed networks that use NetBIOS over TCP/IP.

NetBIOS names are used by earlier versions of Microsoft® Windows® operating systems to identify and locate computers and other shared or grouped resources needed to register or resolve names for use on the network.

NetBIOS names are a requirement for establishing networking services in earlier versions of Microsoft operating systems. Although the NetBIOS naming protocol can be used with network protocols other than TCP/IP, WINS was designed specifically to support NetBIOS over TCP/IP (NetBT).

WINS simplifies managing the NetBIOS namespace in TCP/IP-based networks. The following illustration shows a typical series of events involving WINS clients and servers.