NetBios name resolution

I just got back from vacation and plugged my laptop back into my home network. I don't have a server at home; I just use simple netbios broadcast name resolution, but suddenly I couldn't resolve my laptop's name anymore. I've posted about this problem before, but this time I actually spent some time learning what was going on under the hood.

Rather than explain it in my own words, I'd like to point you to a great article that discusses how netbios works. Ultimately what happened to me was the last network I visited used DHCP to configure my machine to be a “P-node“ box (ipconfig /all shows Node Type: peer-peer). This requires a WINS server to resolve names, which I don't have at home.

So I ended up deleting the DhcpNodeType named value (it was set to 2, which is P-Node) under the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Netbt\Parameters key. Reboot and voila, problem solved.

If you're running a small network without a server, you would be well served to read that article, and learn how to use nbtstat (it's pretty self-explanatory, but knowing it exists is useful). I'm now much better prepared for dealing with name resolution problems on my little home network :)