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What is the difference between DNS and WINS?

What is the difference between DNS and WINS?

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DNS is used to resolve domain names (such as www.microsoft.com) to IP address. WINS is used to resolve NetBIOS names (such as mailserver) on Microsoft networks to IP address. WINS is only available on Windows NT, 2000 and .NET servers and is useless for non-Microsoft clients. WINS is only needed for pre-Windows 2000 systems since Windows 2000, XP and .NET systems all use Active Directory (which is DNS based) instead of WINS even to resolve NetBIOS names.

This was first published in August 2002

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