History Lesson: NetBIOS, WINS and LMHOSTS file

NetBIOS and WINS can be seen as an old system for what is now DNS. Actually DNS existed back in the 90s, but Microsoft had the idea to build their own competitor system.

NetBIOS is the naming scheme. WINS does NetBIOS name to IP address resolution.

The LMHOSTS file is then for WINS like the plain hosts file.

So, just like DNS does hostname to IP resolution nowadays.

In any modern network there should be no WINS server any more. It might only be on extremely old legacy systems (running since mid of the 90s) that a WINS server is still there.

Sources:
Networking Fundamentals: Part 6 at minute 51.

Keywords:
Windows, Networking

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