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WINS and reverse DNS question

gojericho0gojericho0 Member Posts: 1,059 ■■■□□□□□□□
in Windows XP Professional
Is there any reason why an organization would need a WINS box if the whole enviroment is using win2k3 servers and xp clients?

Also could someone give me some examples of when reverse dns would be required?

Thanks
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    snooper47374snooper47374 Member Posts: 43 ■■□□□□□□□□
    No, you would not need a WINs server if all boxes are 2000 +
    Going to slowly study for 290. Baby due in May.
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    kalebkspkalebksp Member Posts: 1,033 ■■■■■□□□□□
    gojericho0 wrote:
    Also could someone give me some examples of when reverse dns would be required?

    I suppose if you were watching network traffic and wanted to know the FQDN of some IP address on your network it would be helpful.
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    eurotrasheurotrash Member Posts: 817
    some programs probably require them (reverse lookup zones).
    i believe nslookup though requires it. ipsec monitor too, if you want name resolution.
    witty comment
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    strauchrstrauchr Member Posts: 528 ■■■□□□□□□□
    WINS is quite often required for legacy apps for name resolution as they do not support DNS. A sort of example of this is a completed W2k3 network I built. I decided to add some NAS devices (SNAP) and the only name resolution they supported was WINS. They needs name resolution to allow Windows based authentication. So I had to add WINS to infrastructure.

    Reverse DNS is very handy for diagnosis. Say you get a rogue IP address spitting out thousand of packets. A quick to identify it would be ping -a <ip address> and the name may help you identify it.

    There are other reasons but these are usually enough to use both.
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    skully93skully93 Member Posts: 323 ■■■□□□□□□□
    I can't speak from experience, but I should like to think that if you have a good set of servers installing the WINS service shouldn't put too much of a burden on them. Plus that leaves you with the handy diagnostic qualities.

    Hope that helps!
    I do not have a psychiatrist and I do not want one, for the simple reason that if he listened to me long enough, he might become disturbed.

    -- James Thurber
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    keatronkeatron Member Posts: 1,213 ■■■■■■□□□□
    What snap appliance did you install? I've rolled out tons of these things and all of the ones I've used in the last 3 years all support dns.
    http://resources.infosecinstitute.com/author/keatron
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    strauchrstrauchr Member Posts: 528 ■■■□□□□□□□
    The last SNAP servers I did was about 2 years ago. I updated them to the latest software I could and everything but even the product documentation said it only support WINS. I can't remember the models and I don't have access to that network anymore.

    I thought it was strange they didn't support DNS. I think there was an option to buy the latest software for them but the business didn't want to fork out anymore cash. There was a 3 months window I think where the software was free if you bought them brand new but we missed that window. Product support in general I didn't find quite helpful. Good devices though for the price.
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    strauchrstrauchr Member Posts: 528 ■■■□□□□□□□
    skully93 wrote:
    I can't speak from experience, but I should like to think that if you have a good set of servers installing the WINS service shouldn't put too much of a burden on them. Plus that leaves you with the handy diagnostic qualities.

    Hope that helps!

    They can add network overhead as WINS is pretty chatty. And if you have a large enterprise WINS needs a seperate server infrastructure to support it.

    But what handy diagnostics do you refer too?
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