PCA Forums

Ok I took FP's advice and have been strictly using NetBEUI for File and Printer Sharing. All is working except for the fact that if I do ping HOSTNAME in Command Prompt it won't find the hostname. I'm dumbfounded, it worked when using TCP/IP, anyone got any suggestions?

How come your using Netbui? You know it's extremely insecure right?

TCP/IP has to be installed to ping other computers as ping requires a TCP/IP address to work as does tracert.

Darkheart

TCP/IP is installed. Ping IPNUMBER works perfectly fine. It's just when using a hostname instead of an IP it doesn't work. Why using NetBEUI? Cause I was under the impression it is more secure than TCP/IP for File and Printer Sharing than TCP/IP.

I'm using both TCP/IP and Netbeui (bindings in both) otherwise I experienced problems. My router has a firewall plus I'm using ZA on each PC too so I think I'm safe no matter what.

As recommended by Steve Gibson here: http://grc.com/su-bondage.htm I prefer to use NetBEUI for File and printer sharing and UNBIND TCP/IP for both File and Printer Sharing AND Client for Microsoft Networks.

Having TCP/IP bound to those two services is a serious security risk.

NetBEUI is also a much more efficient and faster protocal for LAN file sharing.

If setup properly Netbeui is FAR LESS a security risk than doing what Microsoft wants to do by default which is exposing your entire network to the internet.

correct me if i'm wrong, but as far as i know, referring to ths OSI network layer model used
by cisco, ping is a network layer command using the IP protocol, as is the hostname-to-IP
assignment, which is a part of the IP-protocol suite.

@EvilHorace: even with firewall on router and ZA on each PC, u are still vulnerable, cause there
are always possibiliies to infiltrate your system, e.g. via port 80 (http) with trojans.
You'll never get 100% security, that's it, sad but true.

So is there any way to correct this problem without just using TCP/IP only?

Put the host's name in your LMHOSTS file, if you don't know how to do this look in your windows directory for a file called LMHOSTS.SAM this is a microsoft sample document which explains (pretty well) how to use LMHOSTS to look up named hosts.

Darkheart