Interoperability of WINS and Microsoft DNS

ID: Q164176

The information in this article applies to:

Microsoft Windows NT Server version 4.0

SUMMARY

The Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 Domain Name System (DNS) Server component has the ability to interact with the Windows Internet Name Service (WINS). This article outlines these features.

MORE INFORMATION

To allow for interoperability between DNS and WINS, a new resource record was defined as part of the Windows NT DNS implementation. This record is called a WINS lookup record, and can only be a part of the zone root domain. Any queries that cannot be resolved by the static entries in the DNS zone file will be forwarded to the WINS server (or servers), defined by the WINS lookup record.

There is also a WINS-R or WINS reverse lookup entry that can be added to the IN-ADDR.ARPA file. However, this instructs the DNS server to perform a NetBIOS node adapter status lookup, or NS Query, because WINS does not have a reverse lookup capability. For details of how this is implemented, please see the following Microsoft Knowledge Base article:

ARTICLE-ID: Q154553
TITLE : Windows NT 4.0 DNS WINS Reverse Lookups Do Not Use WINS"

Because the WINS lookup resource record is a proprietary feature, you may want to prevent it from being propagated in a zone transfer. If this is the case, add the LOCAL flag to the entry in the zone file, or select the Settings only affect local server checkbox on the WINS lookup property sheet for the zone's properties. When transferring files from a Windows NT Primary DNS Server to a BIND Secondary, the WINS and WINS-R records may cause the zone transfer to fail. The BIND server can report an error 65281. When you look at the offending record, it is the WINS related record.

Additional query words: BIND unix 65281

Keywords : kbnetwork kbusage nttcp NTSrv
Version : WinNT:4.0
Platform : winnt
Issue type : kbinfo