Characters windows computer name

Every Windows computer must have a hostname and an IP address to communicate with computers across the Internet. They are exactly the same thing. However, the 16th character is reserved for NetBIOS Suffix, which identifies the service type for the registered name. The 16th byte will tell you what type of service is running on the computer e. RAS, workstation, etc. I am adding it as a reference here.

Because the 16th character is reserved, the computer name can only consist of 15 characters. Period was allowed in older operating systems except at the beginning of a name , but Microsoft has discouraged using a period since Windows This is an important concept to grasp.

If I am not making it clear, please post a comment so I can clarify it. The last character cannot be a minus sign or a period. Why octets and not characters? So what does Windows support? Per the Windows Server documentation , it can support octet host names and octet fully-qualified names FQDN — except on Active Directory domain controllers, where there are some other considerations, i.

And that support has been around for a long time. So it is time to move to longer names? First, how easy is it to assign a longer name? But what about ways of setting the computer name? An example:. According to the documentation , no, that only supports up to 15 octets. So no luck there. But what about changing it after the fact? In addition, you can also use the command prompt to change the computer name. This is a good habit to get into. I will add some additional content from Windows NT 4.

The Workstation Service, if enabled, registers this default name. The Server Service, if enabled, registers this default name. As an Ethical Hacker, I still find this table very useful because I can find out a whole lot of information about a network from this table. In fact, there are some security considerations that Microsoft has discussed here. Thanks for reading my article. Visit ZubairAlexander.

All rights reserved. Try These Solutions. I find it amusing that you so strongly advise against using hyphens in a computer name, yet Microsoft automatically names Windows systems using a hyphen! What were they thinking?! Your email address will not be published. Notify me of follow-up comments by email. Notify me of new posts by email. Post navigation Previous Post. Next Post. Feature Comparison of Office Desktop Apps vs. Office on the Web Apps.

On December 27, An illuminating article, thanks for publishing it!