Netbios-ssn 1

[nelson97]

I'm seeing a lot of Netbios-ssn when running netstat on the computers on the network. I know what Netbios is but have never seen or heard of netbios-ssn. Can someone please explain this to me and how I can get rid of these entries?
We're running a Windows 2000 network, a couple of 98's, mostly Prof's and Xp Prof's. And the router is serving as the DHCP.
Thanks

 

[aramsay]

To quote Steve Riley of Microsoft:

NetBIOS has three protocols.


137/tcp,udp netbios-ns NetBIOS name service
138/udp netbios-dgm NetBIOS datagram service
139/tcp netbios-ssn NetBIOS session service


The session service a connection-oriented, sequenced, reliable communication between two machines. The datagram service is a connectionless, unsequenced, unreliable service. netbios-ssn compares to TCP as netbios-dgm compares to UDP.


NetBIOS is one of those nebulous things that exists at various layers, depending on whose book you're reading. Since NetBIOS requires some type of network and transport, it isn't a layer 3 or 4 protocol. Most people classify it at layer 5; I've seen some diagrams show it spanning layers 5 though 7.

Hope that helps.

Alan