Can You Use DNS Instead of WINS?

The question of whether you can use Domain Name System (DNS) insteadof Windows Internet Name Service (WINS) has come up frequently since Microsoftreleased Windows NT 4.0. With this version, Microsoft started shipping a Requestfor Comment (RFC)-compliant, functional DNS service. Many people wonder whetherthey can use DNS instead of WINS in an NT 4.0 environment. Unfortunately, theanswer is a qualified no. This incompatibility is because NT workstations andservers rely on the NetBIOS protocol and APIs to provide native services such asfile and print, messaging, database access. To accommodate this dependence, WINSprovides some capability above and beyond basic name-to-address resolution.Specifically, every NT name contains a special 16^th-byte hexadecimalvalue that identifies the type of NetBIOS service it provides. This 16^th-bytevalue is critical for functions such as locating domain controllers and masterbrowsers.

DNS provides only basic name resolution. Because DNS does not support 16^th-bytetypes, you cannot use it for most NT-specific functions. I qualified my noanswer to using DNS instead of WINS because, in theory, you can run aTCP/IP-based NT network without WINS if you use a combination of DNS for basicname-to-address mapping services, and LMHosts files for NetBIOS-specificentries. However, maintaining static LMHosts files in a large network canquickly become unwieldy. So, we're stuck with WINS. The good news is that withNT 5.0, Microsoft will free us from the bonds of WINS, letting us use DNS, oreven the emerging Dynamic DNS standard, for NT name resolution services.