New Microsoft Knowledgebase article

[David M. Davisson]

Larry McElderry wrote:
> 
> David:
> 
> Gald you mentioned that,  it's always been a bit of mystery to me.  I know
> what a DNS name is,  but what exactly is a netbios name?  Where is it used?
> 
> Larry

Simply put, the netbios name is the name you give the computer in
networking properties on Windows clients or servers.  The DNS name is
the host name and domain name that you put in the DNS networking
properties.  The host name and netbios name could (M$ says should) be
the same.  The netbios domain name is the name of the domain that you
you and logon to.  The DNS domain name is the same as your registered
DNS domain name on ther internet.  So the confusion could be like this:

Host Name: PENTIUM
NT (netbios) domain name: COMPANY
DNS domain name: company.com

In the network neighborhood you would see the computer Pentium.  In your
sendmail logs, the host would be recorded as pentium.company.com.

As I said, simply put.  There is a lot more to this issue.  There are a
couple of good docs in the Samba docs on this, and there is a brief and
excellent explanation of netbios netowrking in the "Learn Samba in 24
Hours" book.  I haven't read "Using Samba" yet, but I am sure there is a
good explanation there too.  Once you understand how DNS and netbios
interact and work together, the source of a lot of those nagging little
network miseries becomes apparent.

-- 
David M. Davisson
davisson at pfp.net