Using WINS Referral

If you have a domain that needs to contain WINS lookup resource records, but some of the authoritative name servers for that domain are running third-party DNS implementations, you can prevent interoperability problems by disabling WINS replication. Alternately, you can prevent interoperability problems by creating and delegating a WINS referral zone . This zone does not perform any registrations or updates, but only refers DNS lookups to WINS.

After you have created your WINS referral zone, you configure your DNS clients to append the WINS referral zone name to unqualified queries. The easiest way is to configure the DHCP server to assign a connection-specific DNS suffix to all DHCP adapters on all computers in your network. That suffix is appended to unqualified queries.

Alternatively, you can specify a domain suffix search list on each computer, as described in "Configuring the Resolver," earlier in this chapter. Keep in mind that when you specify a domain suffix search list, your primary DNS suffix and connection-specific DNS suffix are not used unless you specifically add them to the domain suffix search list.

Figure 6.24 shows an example of WINS referral in a network that includes servers that are running third-party implementations of DNS and that includes clients that are running both Windows 2000 and Windows NT 4.0.

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Figure 6.24 WINS Referral

In this example, the noam.reskit.com zone is stored and replicated between Windows 2000 servers and servers that are running other DNS implementations. To support WINS lookup, the network administrator created a new zone called wins - only.noam.reskit.com that is devoted to providing DNS - WINS integrated lookups for WINS clients. The network administrator enabled WINS lookup only on this zone, and did not add any resource records other than WINS resource records.

To register in DNS, Windows 2000–based clients send dynamic update requests to a DNS server that is authoritative for the domain noam.reskit.com. Both Windows 2000 and Windows NT 4.0–based clients register in WINS as well.

In this example, when a Windows 2000–based DNS client looks up a computer by its short name, it appends all the domain suffixes that it is configured to append, including the domain suffix wins - only.noam.reskit.com to produce the FQDN. For example, if the WINS host queried for is host - a, the client would use a DNS query for host - a.wins - only.noam.reskit.com.

Having only one WINS-integrated zone provides other advantages as well. When a DNS forward lookup for the host name of a computer uses WINS lookup, the DNS name specified and used in the query explicitly indicates that the source used to resolve the name was a DNS server that uses WINS lookup integration. This integrated solution can also prevent the confusing situation in which DNS queries for different FQDNs resolve to the same WINS client name and IP address. This result can easily occur if you add and configure multiple zones and enable each of them to use WINS lookup integration.

For example, suppose you have two zones, both configured to use WINS lookup. The zones are rooted and originate at the following DNS domain names:

  • noam.reskit.com.

  • eu.reskit.com.

With this configuration, a query for a WINS client named host - a can be resolved by using either of the following FQDNs:

  • host - a.noam.reskit.com.

  • host - a.eu.reskit.com.