WINS Nodes for Fun and Profit
by Gary Wisniewski - Spider Eye Studios
1, 2, 4, 8
B, P, M, H
Brain Power Makes Headaches
Broadcast, Point-to-point, Multimode, Hybrid
B-Node, P-Node, M-Mode, H-Node
| B-Node: | 0x1 |
| Broadcast over the net as the only means of resolving NetBIOS names. | |
| P-Node: | 0x2 |
| Assume a point-to-point connection to a WINS server is the only means of resolving names on the network. | |
| M-Node: | 0x4 |
| Broadcast first, then use WINS upon failure. Local names will thus always be found using broadcast, at the expense of significant extra network traffic. | |
| H-Node: | 0x8 |
| Use WINS first, then broadcast upon failure. All names will be found using WINS, except names which are very new and haven't yet made it into WINS, or names on the LAN which aren't configured for WINS. |
If you want to play it safe, but have a good working network, use H-Nodes.
If you really don't trust WINS, and don't really care if your network works well, use M-Nodes.
If you run a tight ship, and demand purity and efficiency, use P-Nodes.
If you don't want to use WINS, use B-Nodes, but then of course that means that you're using DHCP and have an NT Server and are configuring it not to use WINS even though you certainly should know better since you're using DHCP anyway, and since you have gone to the trouble to figure out what these node types mean, and thus should require only minimal intelligence in order to know that you SHOULD be using WINS and thus I conclude that the B-Node setting is only used by the stupid.
I don't know where to find this information and I've never seen good documentation on it, especially the last bit.
Boy at Pub: "So, where do you work?"
Girl: "I'm a programmer."
Boy: "Really? I use computers too!"
Girl: "Ever use B-Nodes?"
Boy: "All the time!"
Girl: [throws up]
