Windows 2000 Administration in a Nutshell

Name

TCP/IP

Synopsis

The most widely implemented network protocol in use today.

Description

TCP/IP is a protocol that was originally implemented on Unix platforms but has now become the default network protocol on Microsoft Windows, Novell NetWare, and Apple Macintosh computing platforms. TCP/IP is routable and can be used for both local-area networks (LANs) and wide-area networks (WANs). You should use TCP/IP if:

• Your network is heterogeneous in character, consisting of different computing platforms and operating systems that all need to work together.

• You need connectivity with the Internet or want to deploy Internet technologies within a corporate intranet environment.

• You want to make use of the Active Directory component of Windows 2000 Server. (Active Directory requires TCP/IP.)

A full treatment of TCP/IP is beyond the scope of this book. What follows here is a brief summary of its important features. For more information see the books TCP/IP Network Administration by Craig Hunt and Windows NT TCP/IP Network Administration by Craig Hunt and Robert Bruce Thompson, both published by O’Reilly & Associates.

Windows 2000 includes a number of enhancements to TCP/IP that improve performance and manageability over earlier versions of Microsoft Windows. The main enhancements are:

• Support for APIPA, which allows client computers to be assigned IP addresses automatically without the need of a DHCP server. See Section " in this article for more information.

• Support for dynamic recalculation ...