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Local Name Resolution

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by gregberry

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We have a windows 2k server (standalone, not a dc) called circserver. We have Win98 workstations. I have DNS setup on the windows 2k server. We can ping the w2k server from the win98 pcs using the ip, but not the netbios name (server name). The Win98 pcs can ping internet names (ex yahoo.com). What would you suggest, do I need to install WINS?

5 replies

by timwalsh

One answer would be to install WINS. In you DNS configuration, did you set up a reverse lookup zone? The forward lookup zone resolves IP addresses to host names. The reverse lookup zone resolves host hames to IP addresses. WINS resolves NetBIOS names to IP addresses.

Note that NetBIOS names and DNS host names are not always the same (although in Win2K they are).

If you do have a reverse lookup zone configured, make sure you have CName records for all hosts placed in the forward lookup zone.

The reason your workstations could ping (and resolve) www.yahoo.com, is that when your DNS server could not resolve the name from cache (and it recognized the address was external to your domain), the resolution request was merely forwarded to a DNS server farther up the line. When your tried to ping a host name (with no domain suffix, DNS automatically assumed this host was in the local domain and thus did not forward the request elsewhere.

by greybeard770

Ask yourself, ?Why should it work?? You want to resolve a NETBIOS name, which is a WINS function. So unless everything is on a non-routed network which would allow name resolution by broadcast, the server needs to register with WINS.
They told us WINS was going away with Windows 2000. But as long as there are down level (pre W2K) clients, there will be a need for WINS.

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