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Does NetBIOS name resolution maps NetBIOS names to IP address or to MAC address?

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2 Answers 2

up vote 3 down vote accepted

It maps names to ip-addresses. ARP is used to map ip-addresses to MAC addresses.

The output of NBTSTAT -c lists the local cache if you want some direct evidence:

Node IpAddress: [] Scope Id: []

                  NetBIOS Remote Cache Name Table

        Name              Type       Host Address    Life [sec]
    MUNNIN         <20>  UNIQUE         535

Edited to add:
Theo's answer made me realize that while the above answer is probably what you are looking for since almost all NetBIOS today is NetBIOS over TCP (NBT), there are other NetBIOS implementations. For Microsoft's NetBEUI (more correctly NBF) the name resolution service returned MAC addresses and with NetBIOS over IPX\SPX (NBX) name resolution would return an IPX address.

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I thought NetBEUI was IBM? –  Paul Jul 23 '12 at 22:42

Technically, neither. NetBIOS is a networking protocol in itself. There is a version of NetBIOS that also works over TCP/IP, called NBT.


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