Macintosh and WINS

[Byron Kendrick]

Is it possible to have a Mac connect to a WINS server for netbios name
reslution. Can this be done in place of a DNS server.

 

[William M. Smith]

Is it possible to have a Mac connect to a WINS server for netbios name
reslution. Can this be done in place of a DNS server.

Hi Byron!

Mac OS 9 and earlier systems can not use WINS at all.

Mac OS X 10.2 introduced WINS capabilities, which could be activated using
the Directory Access application found in /Applications/Utilities. However,
most implementations of WINS in 10.2.x were either flawed or completely
broken.

Mac OS X 10.3 works much better with WINS and allows the Mac to browse the
network and see other WINS clients very well.

However, Windows 2000 and later as well as Mac OS X were really made to use
DNS for name resolution. Plus older versions of the Mac OS including Mac OS
9 also have the ability to use DNS.

If you have a mixture of Mac clients, you may want to at least set up a DNS
server that can provide WINS lookups. This way, all your clients' name
resolution needs can be handled.

Hope this helps! bill

 

[Byron Kendrick]

Yes helps a lot. Kinda said what I expected about the DNS. I don't think
we will be able to get away form the DNS. Implementing WINS was suggested
to get away from NETbeui. It was suggested that DNS could be removed also.
Forget that. More ammunition to add to the "upgrade the network" arsenal.

Thanks Bill,
Byron

 

[William M. Smith]

Yes helps a lot. Kinda said what I expected about the DNS. I don't think
we will be able to get away form the DNS. Implementing WINS was suggested
to get away from NETbeui. It was suggested that DNS could be removed also.
Forget that. More ammunition to add to the "upgrade the network" arsenal.

Hi Byron!

NeTBeui is an old network protocol similar in function to Apple's Appletalk.
A NetBeui machine will broadcast information about itself and use broadcasts
to discover other NetBeui clients on the network. It also is non-routable,
which means that it can not see NetBeui machines outside its own network
segment.

WINS is Microsoft's implementation of "DNS for Windows" in a NetBios
environment. A central server contains a database of machines and their
addresses and can help any machine in any network locate someone else. It
eliminates the need for NetBeui and improves network performance by
eliminating all those broadcasts.

Today, DNS is the de facto name resolution system for any IP based network.
Many networks still may use WINS, but WINS is going away as more and more
machines lose dependency on NetBios applications.

For someone to suggest installing WINS and removing DNS is crazy!

bill