Difference between NETBIOS, host name and computer name?

A domain is something you will experience on a work network rather than a home environment generally speaking. immagine: computer name john netbios name is usually also john (but has stricter naming restrictions)

on a domain your full computer name may be john.company.local for example

the company.local bit being the name of the domain itself.

netbios is old way of resolving names and in many ways is not used, however is kept there in the OS for backwards compatibility.

your netbios name and computer name for all intents and purposes is nearly always the same.

out of curiosity, is there a specific piece of this from the article you linked that you dont understand and I can try and further clarify.


Windows has a host-name which is provided by user at the time of installation.The same host name is resolved into computer-name by adding two letters "PC". Then the same name is added as Net-BIOS name by adding a new special character ($) at the end of host name. All the 3 names change by changing host-name.