DNS, DHCP, WINS

True that DNS is used mainly for Internet use and large companies with many sites and PDC's, but WINS is a very important part of your DHCP setup.
WINS translates the net bios (computer name)to tcp/ip. Take some time to learn about WINS. There are some good books on this site. your network will be much better for it.
Best of luck
JV

DNS is used for converting Internet Ips to names we understand.
WINS translates computer names to tcp/ip.

Now if you have NT Server running DHCP for internal LAN & a Proxy Server (connected directly to Internet) with your users as Proxy Clients, I suggest you get DHCP running on and WINS as well on Proxy.

With the new Microsoft Os - Win2000 WINS is not used, they have laid more stress on DNS.

Akash

Just to be contrary (I can't help it, it's in my nature), I have set up a Windows-NT4 network that does not use WINS, and only uses DNS. Oddly, the general direction of Win2K AD, etc. seems to be leaning that way.

DNS is used to translate human readable names for systems and services (e.g., www.techrepublic.com) to a numeric network address (e.g., 64.124.237.165). There is an extension called Reverse DNS that allows a lookup of the name, given an IP address.

DNS is obviously the name resolution protocol of choice on the Internet.

It can also be used "internally", quite easily. You just need to define a "root" domain (it does NOT need to be "mycompany.com" or anything like that, if you are just using it internally - it could simply be "mycompany").

A key concept of DNS is that it is hierarchical. You've see that on the Internet where you have "www.cisco.com", "ftp.cisco.com", and "cio.cisco.com". Note that the stuff after the domain name (the path stuff with the slashes) is NOT part of the DNS hierarchy.

Internal DNS structures are often much deeper. Each level adds a descriptor and a "dot". For example:

hp3si.server1.sales.timbuktu.emea.mycompany

This structure has "mycompany" as the root. This organisation seems to break their company up by global geographical regions, since the next level up (or is it "in"?) is "emea" (Europe, Mid East, Africa). The next level suggests that the office is in Timbuktu. Whatever device this is seems to belong to the sales office, and is running off of their server known as "server1". Oh, and finally, it looks like this is a printer (an HP3Si, apparently).

If you're hooking up your netowrk to the Internet, you would want to use properly registered domains, and so on. So the above record would read:

hp3si.server1.sales.timbuktu.emea.mycompany.co.uk

Or something similar.

What about WINS?

As pointed out in another post, this is similar to DNS, but translates NetBIOS names (i.e., actual machine names like "JOHNPC98") to network addresses.

WINS was developed by Microsoft(r) not to replace DNS, but simply to be used on internal networks. Now with the distinction between internal and external networks (esp. the Internet) blurring, people are finding their networks supporting 2 name resolution standards, which becomes increasingly confusing.

So AD comes along. One aspect of AD is the use of DDNS (Dynamic DNS). Basically, when you start up your W2K box, in an AD network, it registers both its machine name and the domain path with DDNS. So if you setup your W2K box as:

johnpc2k

in the domain:

infosys.global.mycompany.net

Then a record for "johnpc2k.infosys.global.mycompany.net" would be established with whatever IP address is for your system. If you were running "standard" DNS, and NetBIOS, the only record would be with WINS for "johnpc2k". Standard DNS does not update automatically (although there are now extensions that can be added...but that's a different story).

One of the neat little things with AD is that your system can still be contacted using just the name "johnpc2k", just like in NetBIOS, and can be contacted using the longer DNS name.

Back to your question: which to use for the PCs? That depends. If your network is based on NT4, or is a P2P network then you will find yourself setting up a WINS server.

You could use DNS on your internal NT4 or P2P network, even if you're not connecting to the Internet (as described previously). But I wouldn't bother, especially without the Dynamic DNS extensions.

On the other hand, if you will be using W2K and AD, you will be using DDNS, not WINS.

============================

Question/Observation: Your printers, servers and other network gear should have fixed IP addresses, and not pick up their info from DHCP, no matter what envirnoment you're in (in general).

As mentioned WINS resolves NetBIOS names (aka, computer name) to IP addresses. DNS resolves fully qualified domain names to IP addresses (support.microsoft.com is a domain name, for example).

DNS was designed for the Internet. In an NT 4 network, you CANNOT use DNS with DHCP. DNS entries are static and must be manually entered. If you run DHCP, you are dynamically assigning IP addresses, which means they will occassionally change thus invalidating your DNS database.

However, in Windows 2000, there is now dynamic DNS that works with DHCP. If you are setting up a Win2k network with dyanmic DNS (DDNS) and DHCP, you will not need WINS. For more information on using DHCP and DNS with Win2K, go to
www.microsoft.com/technet
and do a search for "DHCP" and "DNS".

WINS is meant for private LANs and WANS. You technically do not need WINS if you are not crossing routers. However, if you are running a NT 4 network, or a Win2k network without DDNS, it will improve network browsing ifit is installed. Be careful, though, because WINS is tempermental. If incorrectly configured it will cause a great deal of headaches. Go to
support.microsoft.com
and search for article Q185786 for more information.

This question was auto closed due to inactivity