NetBIOS Name Service (NBNS) is a protocol that exists to resolve names on the network without the requirement for using local hosts files or DNS. It is part of the NetBIOS-over-TCP protocol suite enabling to run on top of an IP network; however, NetBIOS itself is not restricted to only IP. It was developed to essentially serve the same purpose of DNS in that it allows users to access resources using a name and it will in turn resolve that name to an IPv4 IP address. It varies from DNS in that NBNS is a flat name service whereas DNS is hierarchical, meaning that it can have a TLD (Top Level Domain), sub-domains, and hostnames while NBNS is similar to a hosts file where a single name resolves to an IP address. NBNS also varies from DNS in that requests are issued to either broadcast or multicast address, meaning that anyone who is connected to the same broadcast domain will hear this request if they are listening.
NBNS has been around since the early days of Windows to provide...