A node name that provides useful information to system administrators and help desk staff is desirable. Duplicate node names must be avoided, even when not in the same domain since WINS will reject the second workstation of the same name. Duplicate node names can result in an inability to boot the second machine of the same name into the network. The domain will reject the advances of a workstation that has the same name but a different SID as an imposter. Moving a node name to a different computer can be problematic since NT domains are sometimes very slow in completely removing a node name.
Experience indicates that a node name removal can take between one and two hours to resolve.
The name is not hierarchical and is limiting for large enterprise networks. Administrators in large Windows NT networks must be concerned about duplication of the 15 character NetBIOS name. The WINS service will only authenticate the first occurrence of the station name. All duplicate names will be denied authentication at the WINS Server. This will disable Windows networking for the computer with the duplicate computer name.