What is the best way to get the computer name remotely based on an IP address?

Question

I have several windows machines identified by ip address. I would like to write an application that query the computers remotely and gets their name. I cannot rely on DNS because it does not provide exact results.

I heard that there is a NetBIOS API that can be used, but I am not familiar with this API.

Answer 1

PING -A xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx

This will try WINS and then DNS.

The NSLOOKUP command does similar, but only via DNS.

Answer 2

check getnameinfo

The getnameinfo function provides protocol-independent name resolution from an address to an ANSI host name and from a port number to the ANSI service name.

Answer 3

This is the exact purpose of RARP or DHCP.

On Windows there is a dll (DHCPobj.dll) available in one of the Microsoft resource kits that supposedly allows you to make queries like this to your local DHCP server. I've never played with it, so I can't say for sure how well it works.