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NetBIOS (Network Basic Input/Output System) was the first implementation of a Local Area Network (LAN) by IBM® for its PCs. It offered both connection-oriented and connectionless transport service using character strings to name nodes on the network. Thus, NetBIOS provided a way of mapping network names to addresses that was transparent to the user-level application. This implementation also included the definition of an Application Programming Interface (API) to access NetBIOS services. Since then, many applications have been written to run on NetBIOS LANs offered by a variety of vendors.
At first NetBIOS was confined to the world of MS-DOS® and compatible operating systems. Later, implementations of NetBIOS transport providers were created for other operating systems, including the UNIX system. Applications written for NetBIOS providers can run on LANs that have a mixture of UNIX, DOS, OS/2 and other machines.
X/Open has defined a way to use XTI to write UNIX system clients and servers that access the services of any NetBIOS provider. The NetBIOS providers available with SCO OpenServer are TCP/NetBIOS and NetBEUI. References in this chapter to SCO TCP/NetBIOS refer to the NetBIOS in Release 1.2.1 or later of SCO TCP/IP (also available as part of SCO OpenServer and SCO Open Desktop Release 3.0 or later). References in this chapter to NetBEUI refer to Release 2.2 or later (available as part of SCO Advanced File and Print Server or Microsoft® LAN Manager for SCO Systems Release 2.2 or later).