Question about WINS I got once at an Interview

plettner

I just wanted to know people's thought on a question I got about WINS a few years ago at an interview. The guy asked me "Would you use WINS in this organisation?".

Yes it was very vague. I won't go into what I answered just yet. I'm curious at the moment what people would answer.

The organisation is a local council and has about 500 users or so spread over 5 or 6 sites.

I'm after people's opinions, what they would say and why.

At the time I didn't know if Windows NT clients were used or if they were all 2000. I didn't know exactly what servers were used (although they were Microsoft Windows Servers of some kind). I didn't know if AD was used.

Was it a question to see how well I researched the organisation beforehand or a simply a technical question to see if I understood WINS?

royal

I personally would always use WINS until there is zero dependency on netbios. Many applications still require netbios, such as Exchange. Also, if you are using private links between all your sites, wins will assist in name resolution of workstations in other sites since you won't have to go through internet (internet routers will block private ip addresses from being routed). Of course, operating systems after windows 2000 rely less on netbios and will instead use dns first, it will still use netbios if dns resolution fails. Also, Wins will help cut down on name resolution traffic since instead of having 500 machine's broadcasting to find a node, it will be able to query WINS instead. This if course depends on if you're using 0x1, 0x2, 0x4, or 0x8.

plettner

I said "no" and then went on to say assuming they were using Windows 2000 or above and did not have any legacy applications relying on NETBIOS. Also, users would not need to connect to other users' computers or printers. They would only need to connect to shares published in Active Directory.

I was not aware Exchange relied on NETBIOS. I believe they were runinng an Exchange environment.

I read somewhere removing NETBIOS on Windows 2000+ networks is now "best practice" as it closes some security holes. I'm just wondering what merit this has?


In any case, I didn't get the job

Mishra

I would say no. No reason to implement another service that you don't truly need.

Ye Gum Noki

plettner wrote:

I said "no" and then went on to say assuming they were using Windows 2000 or above and did not have any legacy applications relying on NETBIOS. Also, users would not need to connect to other users' computers or printers. They would only need to connect to shares published in Active Directory.

I was not aware Exchange relied on NETBIOS. I believe they were runinng an Exchange environment.

I read somewhere removing NETBIOS on Windows 2000+ networks is now "best practice" as it closes some security holes. I'm just wondering what merit this has?


In any case, I didn't get the job

I think it certainly has merit. I would have said, "If we need it." If it is a smaller organisation, maybe they were using NT; surprisingly there are still NT shops out there. Or maybe some legacy apps that needed it. But if you don't need it, don't use it.

Sorry to hear you didn't get it.