Week 6 - NetBIOS

 NetBIOS and Windows

Something that should be considered in the foundations of networking is the NetBIOS and the purpose it serves. NetBIOS and the changes of TCP/IP prompted changes in the very development of Windows. Microsoft developed Netbios as a networking protocol and ended up calling it NetBIOS/NetBEUI. NetBIOS was a protocol that was only really suitable for small networks for 2 primary reasons. The first reason behind that it had no logical IP address so each system had to remember the NetBIOS name and the MAC address. Without logical addresses, there was no way to support routing. 

The second reason is that all broadcasting made it unacceptable for larger networks. Microsoft's main networking protocol went with the design thought process that this would mainly be used on smaller, unrouted networks. 

Eventually, due to the changes occurring in the world of networking, Microsoft developed a new TCP/IP protocol that enabled it to keep using NetBIOS but ended up scrapping the NetBEUI protocol itself. This new protocol they developed runs NetBIOS on top of the TCP, creating Microsoft's own version of a resolution protocol that didn't have to deal with DNS.a