LMHOST vs HOST

[Dave's News]

Can someone explain to me what the difference between the two are? Where
are these files located? Where do they need to be for Windows9x machines to
use them? Does the HOSTS file use the same conventions as LMHOSTS?

Links to whitepages, etc are welcome. Thanks in advance.

-Dave
dro...@inet911.com

[vans...@hotmail.com]

A host file is used for DNS and a Lmhost file is used for name res.
On win9x clients they are place in the windows dir. here are a few
articles that can be found on technet
Q180094
Q163524
Q158487
Q120151
Q172128
Q142309

Also check ou the DNS white paper on www.microsoft.com

[Dave Roscoe]

Thank you very much!

<vans...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:C5A1B11F57F6644F.93033EFF...@lp.airnews.net...

[John R Buchan]

***********************
Name Resolution Basics
***********************
If you are dealing with a single subnet, MS machines can resolve the names
of most other MS machines by broadcast. If you have multiple subnets, you
are interfacing with most non-MS machine (e.g. unix), or (possibly) the
broadcast traffic is causing congestion on your network, you will need to
provide some other form of name resolution. What type of resolution you
provide depends on you environment and (to a degree) personal preference.

There are 2 common types of names that you will need to resolve; DNS host
names (used by winsock and sockets apps like ping and telnet) and NetBIOS
names (used my most MS network functions such as browsing and mapping
drives).

There are 4 common alternatives to broadcast name resolution; hosts,
lmhosts, WINS, and DNS. To a limited degree, MS machines can use any one of
these to resolve both types of names (e.g. If configured to do so, MS
machines can resolve some NetBIOS names via DNS).

Note on hosts and lmhosts files:
--------------------------------
These files reside on the local machine. You can find the proper location
for the them file by searching for hosts.sam or lmhosts.sam. These are
sample files that explain the basics of configuring the hosts or lmhosts
file. the sample files reside in the directory where the hosts lmhosts file
belongs.

The name of the hosts and lmhosts file must have no extension (e.g. hosts,
not hosts.txt).

You should take care to only edit hosts and lmhosts with a true text editor
(e.g. edit.com). Editors such as Notepad can insert 'invisible' non-ASCII
character into the file. You won't see these characters, but they can cause
problems with the parsing of the file.

On 95 machines, you must enable DNS (though you can leave the server list
blank), if you want to use the hosts and/or lmhosts file.

HOSTS file:
-----------
The hosts file contains a static table of <IP address> to <DNS (host) name>
mappings. It is commonly used as an alternative to a DNS server.

LMHOSTS file:
-------------
The lmhosts file contains a static table of <IP address> to <NetBIOS
(computer) name> mappings. The lmhosts file has considerably more
configurability than the hosts file. For example, it allows you to 'import'
an external lmhosts file. This makes it much easier to manage large numbers
of machines using lmhosts files, by having a 'master' file.

In addition, lmhosts allows the resolution of names that include NetBIOS
extension characters. These characters are not text and cannot be included
in a hosts or DNS table, but are they are essential to many MS network
functions.

Lmhosts is commonly used as an alternative to a WINS server.

DNS Server (Domain Name System):
------------
A DNS server is a machine that maintains a static table of <IP address> to
<NetBIOS (computer) name> mappings (and a few other options) and makes this
information available to DNS clients. DNS servers are able to pass queries
along to other DNS servers. So no one machine needs to maintain the entire
name database, which would be basically impossible in a large network (e.g.
the Internet).

MS's version of DNS will only run on NT Servers ($only because MS wants to
sell NT Server$). There are a number of other implementations available
that will run on other machines. One advantage to MS's version is that it
can be configured to interact with a WINS server.

There is a new dynamic DNS standard in the works (I'm not sure what the
status is, at the moment). It will make DNS much more flexible and is,
eventually, supposed to 'replace' WINS.

WINS Server (Windows Internet Name Service):
------------
One of the limitations to hosts, lmhosts, and DNS is that they are static
tables. This means that every time you add/remove a machine or alter the IP
of a machine, you have to manually update the table(s). WINS is a dynamic
solution to this.

WINS allows the resolution of names that include NetBIOS extension
characters These characters are not text and cannot be included in a hosts
or DNS table, but they are essential to many MS network functions.

MS's WINS will only run on NT Server ($$). I understand that there are
other similar systems that will run under variations of unix (e.g. I
believe Samba has one), but I'm not familiar with them.

For the most part WINS is only applicable to MS machines. You can add
static entries for other machines, but very few other machines will use
WINS to register or resolve names.
***********************

[Dave Roscoe]

WOW! That was some explanation! Thank you very much! I think I have all I
need.

-Dave

John R Buchan <see.my.s...@nowhere.null> wrote in message
news:37c73404...@207.46.180.23...