Help understanding NetBIOS and DNS

Hello all

I am new to Anti Online and I am kind of new at computer networking so bare with me. I just started studying NetBIOS and DNS and I was wondering if anyone could explain to me the difference between the two.
Thanks

What is DNS?

DNS (Domain Name System), is the service which translates between Internet names and Internet addresses.

Internet names are the names which we use to refer to hosts on the Internet, such as www.some-address.com and www.antionline.com.

Internet addresses are the numbers which routers use to move traffic across the Internet, such as 216.17.138.115 and 216.136.204.117.
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NetBIOS

An application programming interface (API) that can be used by programs on a local area network (LAN). NetBIOS provides programs with a uniform set of commands for requesting the lower-level services required to manage names, conduct sessions, and send datagrams between nodes on a network.

Or to put simply it's local file sharing between networked computers.

I hope this is what you were looking for.

NetBIOS

Network Basic Input/Output System is a program that allows applications on different computers to communicate within a local area network. It was created by IBM for its early PC Network, later adopted by Novell and Microsoft. NetBIOS is used in Ethernet, token ring and Windows NT networks. It does not support a routing mechanism, so applications communicating on a wide area network must use another "transport mechanism" (such as TCP/IP) rather than, or in addition, to NetBIOS.


DNS

DNS stands for Domain Name System. This System translates a domain name such as antionline.com into the Internet Protocol (IP) numbers (63.146.109.212) to find the correct web site - in this case the site for Domain Bank. The network of computers that constitute the Internet map domain names to their corresponding IP numbers. The data is then made available to all computers and users on the Internet.

I'm assuming you meant WINS not NetBIOS.

WINS is the Windows Internet Naming Service. It's used to translate NetBIOS Names to IP addresses. There is no "reverse" WINS.

WINS was created to make it "easier" to use dynamic addresses (DHCP) and to be able to segment your network. Normal NetBIOS name resolution is based on broadcasts. You don't want to route broadcast traffic. Broadcast traffic is usually the reason why you're segmenting your network in the first place.
WINS is mostly dynamic, the server/workstation registers it's NetBIOS names (1 machine can have multiple names for different purposes) and it's IP address with the WINS server. When another machine needs to know where to find a NetBIOS Name it uses a WINS lookup to get the IP address instead of a broadcast.

"Reverse WINS" (ip to name) is actually done using a "nbtstat -a <ip address>" type request.

WINS is horrible to administer and gave me a lot of headaches in the past..
Not replicating correctly, not registering 0x1B or 0x1C records, 0x1B records "taking a walk" (meaning some workstation became the master browser) etc... :(
I'm glad MS decided to drop WINS and go for DNS..

Thank you all very much!!!
I really appreciate the input from you all.