hostname and dhcp question

[Justin Willmert]

Tim wrote:
> On Fri, 2006-06-30 at 09:11 -0500, Justin Willmert wrote:
>   
>> I'm not an expert, but by how I've always understood it, Windows 
>> machines use DNS entries, hosts file entries, and *NetBIOS* name 
>> broadcasts to look up other computers.
>>     
>
> As far as I was aware, they only played with NetBIOS to find machines
> when doing SMB type of things (Windows file sharing).  Other TCP/IP
> network activities, didn't.
I did a really quick check and if I do an nslookup jupiter (my 
computer's name), I can't get a result (because my DNS server doesn't 
have records of it...I haven't gotten my dad to let me mess with our 
router yet ;-) ), but when I ping jupiter or telnet jupiter 80, I get 
results from both, so I see it as it is looking at the NetBIOS names. I 
verified that those same tests work from another Windows computer, but 
none of my Linux box's can do that. Another test I can think of would be 
to use a packet sniffer, but I've never had good luck with them (I get 
too much stuff to sort through 'cause I don't know how to use the 
correctly), so that's something that I could look into. I'm not saying 
you're wrong, so if there's something missing in my method, I'd really 
like to be told what Windows is actually doing back there.

Justin