WINDOW NETWORK PROTOCOLS

• Windows NT supports several network protocols, and the protocol you use can affect your network performance significantly. To choose the best protocol for your network, you must understand the protocols NT supports, how each works, and where each protocol is most effective. Then, consider the resources that are necessary to implement your protocol choice.

• NetBEUIWhen Microsoft developed Windows for Workgroups (WFW), the NetBEUI protocol was a good choice, and many networks run it even after they convert to NT and Windows 95. The name NetBEUI comes from NetBIOS Extended User Interface, and this name has created confusion since NetBEUI's introduction. NetBIOS is a programming interface, and NetBEUI is a transport protocol. Most Microsoft software and many other packages that run on Windows platforms use the NetBIOS programming interface. Thus, many network administrators continue to use NetBEUI after they install other protocols, because they think the application software can't function without NetBEUI.

Contd..

• NWLINK

• NWLink is Microsoft's version of Novell's IPX/SPX protocol. Networks with Windows clients that access Novell servers use NWLink: for example, a client/server application in which the client runs on NT Workstation or Win95 and the server component, such as a database, runs on a Novell server. Small networks can use NWLink, even without connectivity to a Novell server. NWLink requires less configuration than TCP/IP does. Like TCP/IP, NWLink is routable.A common problem with NWLink is having the wrong frame type, especially in a mixed-frame environment. A frame is a package of information transmitted as a unit from one network device to another.

• TCP/IPMicrosoft is channeling its programming effort into TCP/IP. The corporate world prefers TCP/IP, and you must use it to connect to the Internet, so it's becoming the industry standard. TCP/IP uses more memory and system resources than NWLink or NetBEUI uses; thus it might not be the best choice for small networks. It certainly is not the best choice for DOS clients.

• TCP/IP requires more configuration than NWLink or NetBEUI requires. With TCP/IP, network administrators must decide how to assign IP addresses­ and must worry about how to obtain them, because IP addresses are limited until IP6 comes out. You must decide whether to assign IP addresses

REGISTRY

• Introduced with Windows 95, the Registry is a central repository for unique user and machine configuration data. In basic terms, it is a big database that holds all of the Windows 2003 configuration information –settings relative to user accounts, machine hardware and applications.

• The registry was brought about to replace the old .INI files (that stored configuration settings in editable txt files).

• INI files were good because they were short and easy to edit. They did however have some restrictions such as size limitations and no support for multiple users.

• In came the registry to rid us of these restrictions and make it easier to recover settings after a crash, control access to and track system changes.

• The majority of the information in the Registry is placed there automatically by Windows when you install the OS. The rest comes from utilities and applications via their installation routines. It’s also possible to edit Registry data manually, allowing you to tweak, enable or fix certain settings.

• Below is a screenshot showing the structure of the registry, which is made up of five subtrees (discussed in the next section of this article). You can browse to a key from the left and its values will be displayed in the window on the right. To open the Registry Editor, click Start > Run… and type “regedit.exe”.

STRUCTURE OF REGISTRY

• You can set permissions on specific subtreesor keys so that users or applications will be allowed or not allowed access. By default, users are allowed read access while administrators are allowed read/write access on most keys.

• To set permissions, open regedit.exe, right click a key and select “Permissions…”. This will bring up the ACL list for that key and allow you to edit permissions as you would normally do on an NTFS file or folder.

DATA TYPES

DATA TYPE DESCRIPTIONREG_SZ A simple string value. Would usually contain a

URL, Path, or port number for example.REG_BINARY Raw binary data represented in hexadecimal

format.REG_DWORD Another type of REG_BINARY but this one is 4

bytes long.REG_MULTI_SZ A character string of variable size that allows

you to enter a number of parameters in this single value entry.

REG_EXPAND_SZ This is a character string of variable size that can contain dynamic information which will change at startup (such as %username% which is of a different size for every name)