The –n Switch

The –n Switch
You use the –n switch to display the local NetBIOS name table on a Windows device. The output (shown in Figure 4.7) is similar to the output of the –a switch, except that instead of displaying
the NetBIOS name table of another host, you are displaying it for the machine on which you are running the command.

FIGURE 4 . 7 Sample output of the nbtstat –n command

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The –c Switch

The –c Switch
The function of the –c switch is to display the local NetBIOS name cache on the workstation on which it is run. Figure 4.6 shows sample output of the nbtstat –c command.

FIGURE 4 . 6 Sample output of the nbtstat –c command

Each entry in this display shows the NetBIOS name, the hex ID for the service that was accessed, the type of NetBIOS name (unique or group), the IP address that the name resolves to,
and its Life (in seconds). The Life amount dictates how long (in seconds) each entry will live in the cache. When this time expires, the entry is deleted from the cache.

NOTE:

If you run nbtstat to display the cache and you get the result “No names in the cache,” all entries in the cache have expired. This will happen often if you don’t regularly access machines or services with NetBIOS names.

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The –A Switch

The –A Switch

The –A switch works exactly as the –a switch and produces the same output; only the syntax of the command is different. First, you use an uppercase A instead of a lowercase a. Second, you
use the IP address of the host whose NetBIOS name table you want to view instead of the Net- BIOS name. The syntax includes the nbtstat command followed by the –A switch and finally the IP address of the host whose NetBIOS table you want to view:

nbtstat –A 199.153.163.2

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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.

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