Nbtstat

A good to know command line tool that you can use is the Nbtstat command, this command can give you protocol statistic and TCP/IP connections using NetBIOS over TCP, and it is very useful command if you need to get information about IP address for example.

It is also good for troubleshoot NetBIOS name resolution problems and to resolve NetBIOS names to IP addresses, it resolve the name using one of the following methods:

1. Local cache lookup
2. WINS lookup
3. Network broadcast
4. LMHOSTS file lookup
5. DNS server query

What Is TCP?

TCP stand for Transmission Control Protocoland it is one of the core internet protocols. It provides reliable, ordered, error-checking delivery of a data across the network, this is why it also call a safe protocol, you know that if the data was send it will arrived to its location, of course we know this is not 100% true, but that was the definition.

What is IP?

IP stand for Internet Protocol the protocol that need to delivering packets from a source device to a destination device. It contain a structure that encapsulate the data that need to be delivered.

What is NetBIOS?

NetBIOS stand for Network Basic Input/Output System is a protocol that allow software on separate devices to communicate over the LAN (local area network).

Example of nbtstat output:

Here is the output for the nbtstat /? – the help screen

 

Displays protocol statistics and current TCP/IP connections using NBT

(NetBIOS over TCP/IP).

 

NBTSTAT [ [-a RemoteName] [-A IP address] [-c] [-n] [-r] [-R] [-RR] [-s] [-S] [interval] ]

 

-a   (adapter status) Lists the remote machine’s name table given its name

-A   (Adapter status) Lists the remote machine’s name table given its

IP address.

-c   (cache)         Lists NBT’s cache of remote [machine] names and their IP addresses

-n   (names)         Lists local NetBIOS names.

-r (resolved)       Lists names resolved by broadcast and via WINS

-R   (Reload)         Purges and reloads the remote cache name table

-S   (Sessions)       Lists sessions table with the destination IP addresses

-s   (sessions)       Lists sessions table converting destination IP

addresses to computer NETBIOS names.

-RR (ReleaseRefresh) Sends Name Release packets to WINS and then, starts Refresh

 

RemoteName   Remote host machine name.

IP address   Dotted decimal representation of the IP address.

interval     Redisplays selected statistics, pausing interval seconds

between each display. Press Ctrl+C to stop redisplaying

 

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