WINS In Relation To Netbui/NetBios

[Skittle]

I have inherited a network from a small company we have taken over. They use a different networking method to us
and I am a little confused about how it works.

Its Netbui/NetBios which to my understaning is not routable. Yet it uses WINS to convert machine names to IP addresses. To my mind WINS is not routing as such, it is just providing a translation table overlay.

So my question is, at which level does WINS sit in the OSI ( I presume Network/3 )?



Dazed and confused

 

[Scarra]

WINS doesn't actually do any routing - it's merely a kind of database. So I would say that it's higher up than that.

DNS is layer 6 (Presentation) - or level 4 in the TCP/IP model - so I guess WINS would also be at that level.

 

[Beboen]

Hi,

In DNS you convert fully qualified domain names (e.g. computer.department.company.com) to an IP - or vice versa.

WINS uses the same names as NetBIOS names and converts them to an IP address (thus as in the example it just links "computer" to an IP).

Since WINS uses IP address to convert names to it is routable.

Actually, you can think of WINS as a NetBIOS database with IP addresses linked.
NetBEUI is like TCP/IP and is not routable.

HTH,
Beboen