OS/2 TCPBEUI Name Resolution
Sometimes I have the following problem to deal with: An OS/2 system uses NetBIOS over TCP/IP (aka TCPBEUI) and should communicate with a SMB server (likewise using TCPBEUI) on a different subnet. This does not work on OS/2 out of the box without a little bit of help.
NETBIOS (originally literally the ROM BIOS on the 1984 IBM PC Network adapter) was designed to work on a LAN, specifically a single LAN segment. There is no need for centralized infrastructure, workstations can come and go. This makes using ad hoc networks very easy and does not require additional dedicated infrastructure and administration.
When NETBIOS (or NetBIOS) moved to Ethernet, there were initially many different ways of encapsulating it. Eventually the world settled on NetBIOS Frames aka NBF.
But in the 1980s, there was also a parallel effort to move NetBIOS on top of TCP/IP, eventually standardized as RFC 1001 and RFC 1002 (both dated March 1987). This effort was originally driven by non-PC platforms, but soon enough DOS-based (e.g. HP ARPA Services circa 1990, PC/FTP likely earlier) and OS/2-based (MS LAN Manager 2.1 in 1991) implementations of NetBIOS over TCP/IP became available.
