Introduction

If you are familiar with Windows NT 4.0 networks, you are undoubtedly familiar with the intricacies of a WINS infrastructure. You might also be wondering why Microsoft didn't get rid of WINS with Windows 2000 when DNS was crowned the king of name resolution. Well, the good news is that with Windows Server 2003, WINS is intended and needed only for backward compatibility. Windows Server 2003 running in native mode does not need to use WINS at all. The Active Directory (AD) and Domain Name Service (DNS) are used to provide the WINS-like functionality of resolving names into IP addresses.

So, that means we don't need to talk about WINS, right? Sorry, but you don't get off that easily. Until your network is 100 percent Windows Server 2003 (or higher) and no applications on the network require NetBIOS name resolution, you will still need WINS to provide backward compatibility for legacy Windows operating systems, particularly with any NT domains. With that in mind, let's talk about what WINS is and how it works.