Workshop

Most of the time, you’ll not want to use DNS; WINS comes with NT and is dynamic and relatively easy
to use. DNS is somewhat trickier to set up and doesn’t offer as much to the Windows networking world.
The only time you’ll want to set up the Microsoft DNS server is if you’re acting as a Web server.
Because you’re then participating in the Internet’s network—which is not a Microsoft file and print
network—DNS is the only option. Using DNS for internal Windows network name resolution doesn’t
make sense most of the time.
Does all of this seem like a mess? You’re not going crazy: It is a mess. There are too many pieces and
parts to keep track of with TCP/IP and Windows. Microsoft fans are really, really, hoping that future
releases will comb some of the tangles out, and no doubt NT 5.0 probably will, but we’ll have to wait
awhile to find out. In the meantime, take it slowly; it’s not too bad once you get the hang of it. See Figure
11.2 for a sample Windows network that uses TCP/IP. In it, you’ll see that PCs are configured upon
bootup or lease expiration from the DHCP server on their local segment, which configures them with IP
addresses and with the configuration information they need to resolve names from their local WINS
server. It’s not too awful. You have just a couple of things to set up.
Figure 11.2 A sample Windows TCP/IP network.
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