TCP/IP Fundamentals for Microsoft Windows

Microsoft TechNet

This online book is a structured, introductory approach to the basic concepts and principles of the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) protocol suite, how the most important protocols function, and their basic configuration in the Microsoft® Windows Server® 2003 and Windows® XP operating systems. This book is primarily a discussion of concepts and principles to lay a conceptual foundation for the TCP/IP protocol suite. Unlike many other introductory TCP/IP texts, this book provides an integrated discussion of both Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) and Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6).

This book is not a discussion of TCP/IP planning, configuration, deployment, management, or application development. For a discussion of TCP/IP planning, configuration, deployment, and management, see the online Help for Windows Server 2003 and the Windows Server 2003 Deployment Kit. For a discussion of how to develop TCP/IP applications using Windows Sockets, see the Microsoft Developer Network.

This book provides an educational vehicle for the fundamentals of TCP/IP to either prepare you for a career in information technology or to augment your knowledge of TCP/IP-based networking in Microsoft Windows. This book is not intended to be a primer for computing or networking technology.

Click to Read More

Implementing CIFS The Common Internet FileSystem

By Christopher R. Hertel

CIFS is a network filesystem plus a set of auxiliary services supported by a bunch of underlying protocols. Any and all of these various bits have been called CIFS, which leaves us with a somewhat muddy definition. To make things easier, we'll start by saying that CIFS is "Microsoft's way of doing network file sharing", and work out the details as we go on.

The name "CIFS", of course, is an acronym. It stands for Common Internet File System, a title which deserves a bit of dissection:

Common
The term has a variety of connotations, but we will assume that Microsoft was thinking of common in the sense of commonly available or commonly used. All MS operating systems have had some form of CIFS networking available or built in, and there are implementations of CIFS for most major non-MS operating systems as well.

Unfortunately, there is not yet a specification for CIFS that is complete, correct, authoritative, and freely available. Microsoft defines CIFS by their implementations and, as we shall see, their attempts at documenting the complete suite have been somewhat random. This has an adverse impact on the commonality of the system.......

Click to Read More/Download

Understanding OSI

By John Larmouth

This text aims to provide an intelligent near-beginner (as far as OSI is concerned) with an understanding of Open Systems Interconnection (OSI). Some previous acquaintance with data communications as presented in the many text books on that broad subject would be useful. The book is aimed at the reader who is curious enough to ask: "Why is it that way? What advantages does that approach give? Might there be other or better ways?"

This text is not an exposition of the technical detail of the OSI Standards. Rather it aims to explain why OSI is the shape it is, and to guide the reader in a critical examination of the OSI approach to specifying rules for computer communication (computer protocols). The text should be particularly valuable for those who are newly moving into positions where they are a part of a team developing applications using OSI, either in the International Standards' work or for their own firm. The text would also be useful for those sections of undergraduate and taught masters' courses that are dealing with OSI, either as the main text or as follow-on reading.

Much of the material of necessity represents personal perceptions and reasoning, as the real reasons for approaches and choices are rarely presented in International Standards or CCITT/ITU-T Recommendations (the primary definitive documents on OSI). The main purpose of ISO Standards and CCITT/ITU-T Recommendations is to present clearly the protocol to be implemented, not to explain the reasons for the choices. Frequently such reasons are buried in old working documents, maybe even only in private or national papers rather than being recorded in official international documents. In some cases reasons are merely in the heads of early workers, and are perhaps not even well articulated. It can also happen that earlier non-OSI protocols provided the basis for the OSI work, and reasons and rationale at the OSI level are simply "because that is the way it was done in xyz", and the search for real reasons has to go back a level. Nonetheless, I have been active in both progressing the OSI work and in presenting it at conferences and seminars for close on two decades, and the presentation in this text is believed to be a fair one.

Click to Read More/Download