About WINS
WINS is Microsoft’s Windows-only name resolution protocol used by Windows machines prior to Windows 2000. Like DNS, WINS is also implemented with a series of servers that maintain databases of host names to IP addresses. However, setting up WINS is easier than setting up a DNS because WINS actually receives most address records automatically. Administrators name hosts and set one or more WINS server as part of the machine configuration. When a host boots it tells the WINS server its name and current IP address. However, the name that is registered is not in the DNS format of host.domain.xxx, but is in a proprietary format.
WINS is typically used within a company to provide host name resolution of company-specific Windows hosts. It is often teamed with DNS to provide external resolution.
A pre-Windows 2000 Microsoft host that needs to do a name lookup first looks it up on a WINS server, and if a match is not returned, then the DNS server is checked.
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