How can you tell what strategy each client on your network will use when performing name registration and resolution? Each machine on an NBT network earns one of the following designations, depending on how it handles name registration and resolution: b-node, p-node, m-node, and h-node. The behaviors of each type of node are summarized in
Table 1.1.
Uses point-to-point registration and resolution only.
m-node
Uses broadcast for registration. If successful, it notifies the NBNS server of the result. Uses broadcast for resolution; uses NBNS server if broadcast is unsuccessful.
h-node (hybrid)
Uses NBNS server for registration and resolution; uses broadcast if the NBNS server is unresponsive or inoperative.
In the case of Windows clients, you will usually find them listed as
h-nodes or
hybrid nodes. Incidentally, h-nodes were invented later by Microsoft, as a more fault-tolerant route, and do not appear in RFC 1001/1002.
You can find out the node type of any Windows machine by typing the command
ipconfig
/all and searching for the line that says
Node Type.
C:\>ipconfig /all
Windows 98 IP Configuration
...
Node Type . . . . . . . . . . : Hybrid
...
