Sams Teach Yourself TCP/IP in 24 Hours (4th Edition)

DNS and NetBIOS are certainly the most common name service methods for TCP/IP networks, but they are not the only methods. Network Information Service (NIS) is an information service developed by Sun Microsystems that provides host-to-IP name resolution services. NIS was once common on Solaris networks (and other Unix-based networks) but has recently been de-emphasized by Sun in favor of DNS.