Stupid Question

[andrew12]

Or maybe it's a subtle difference.

Could someone explain, in simple terms, the difference between a hostname and a netbios name.

Thanks and apologies for my stupidity.

 

[SgtB]

Hostname can refer to either the Netbios name or the FQDN name.
The netbios name is the WINS type name, while the FQDN (Fully qualified Domain Name) refers to the DNS type name.

Netbios = mypc
FQDN = mypc.mynetwork.com

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[bernies]

NetBIOS names are used on older (Windows NT and before) Windows networks to access shared resources. This is similar to NIS in the UNIX world. The rest of the world uses DNS hostnames. NetBIOS names are limited to 15 characters (16 really but one is a hidden "special" character that is not shown). This is why even though Windows 2000 networks use fully qualified DNS hostnames to find shared resources, there is still a "Pre-Windows 2000 name" for the machine. This name is its NetBIOS name, and is used for backward compatibility.
I can understand your confusion over the term "hostname." It is used interchangably to designate DNS, NetBIOS, NIS, NIS+, LDAP, SQL, ARP and many other service providers.