Examples of why Netbios would be enabled
I was wondering if some body could please share an example of why a network would have net bios enabled. I understand that it is designed for networks, but I also understand that it can be disabled. And its for "basic input and output" across LAN's. So what would actually be a reason why I would want to use it on my network. I can communicate between computers easily across a server or something? Well I am interested on some example. Please setup an example environment for me. Many thanks.
In order to understand the uses of NetBIOS, you must understand what it actually does. It's not just "Basic I/O"… that is part of the acronym, but the acronym doesn't describe it. NetBIOS ties a machine name to an IP address, much as DNS resolves fully-qualified names to IPs. It's primarily used these days to make network share access and shared printer access easier for completely computer-illiterate morons in a corporate environment. Other than that, it has no real benefit… it resolves a name to an IP and, if you just use the IP, there's no need.
Read up on the relationship between NetBIOS and WINS to understand more fully.
chronicburst wrote: So only schools and businesses would actually need it? For example schools to print from room 1337 to room 101001. Or a business would print from 1 office to another. Well more so schools. Would nbtstat -a localhost work or would it not read a local location.
No one actually needs it… it's more of a convenience. When supporting an environment of people that need inter-network access, NetBIOS can make the administration tasks easier by empowering the users to understand the basics. As stated previously, NetBIOS only resolves a name to an IP… so, normal functionality is available just using the IP in the absence of NetBIOS.
Localhost refers to your own machine. It's a named reference to the 127.x.x.x subnet.