The –a Switch

The –a Switch
The –a switch displays a remote machine’s NetBIOS name table, which is a list of all the Net- BIOS names that that particular machine “knows about.” The following command produced
the output for the server S1 shown in Figure 4.5:

nbtstat –a S1

FIGURE 4 . 5 Sample output of the nbtstat –a command

TABLE 4 . 1 Last Byte Identifiers for Unique Names

TABLE 4 . 2 Last Byte Identifiers for Group Names

As you can see, using this switch produces an output with four columns. The Name column gives the NetBIOS name entry of the host in the NetBIOS name table of the remote machine.

The next column displays a unique two-digit hexadecimal identifier for the NetBIOS name. This identifier represents the last byte of the NetBIOS name shown in the Name column and is necessary

because the same name might be used several times on the same station. It uniquely identifies which service on the host the name is referencing. Tables 4.1 and 4.2 list the hexadecimal

identifiers for unique and group host names. 

      The Type column refers to the type of NetBIOS name being referenced:

• Unique NetBIOS names refer to individual hosts.
• Group names refer to the names of logical groupings of workstations, either domains or workgroups.

The Status column refers to the status of the NetBIOS name for the specified host, regardless of whether the name has been registered with the rest of the network.