I have a Windows Server 2008 R2 server we'll call server1. It is in domain A. Another machine, server2 is in domain B. If I try to do an nslookup on server1 with just the host name server2, as you'd expect, the lookup fails because the lookup appends the wrong DNS suffix. Server2 is also not in the hosts file. Netbios is also disabled; so, I assume that no Netbios name resolution is happening. I even checked ipconfig /displaydns to make sure that it wasn't cached in there, but it shows as "Name does not exist."
But, I can ping server2 and it works. It resolves the name to an IP. So, any idea how this name is being resolved to an IP?
I think the answer is Link-Local Multicast Name Resolution. Thanks Joeqwerty.