In Routing and Remote Access Service (RRAS), NAT can be used to provide basic Internet connectivity for small offices or home offices. NAT translates IP addresses and associated TCP/UDP port numbers on the private network to public IP addresses which can be routed on the Internet. Through NAT, host computers are able to share a single publicly registered IP address to access the Internet. NAT also offers a number of security features which can be used to secure the resources on your private network. The NAT service is integrated with Read More

Internet Connectivity Introduction  In most organizations and networks today, Internet connectivity is no longer an additional option, but a necessity. Most organizations that have a networking environment need to provide its employees or users with some form of connectivity to the Internet. E-mail and Web sites have evolved into being important mechanisms for a vast number of organizations. Internet connectivity or connections support a company's business in a number of ways. Company employees use the Internet for a number of reasons, including the following: Exchange e-mail with other employees at Read More

Understanding Coexistence and Migration Co-existence occurs when you have IPv4 nodes or IPv6 nodes communicating via an IPv4 infrastructure, an IPv6 infrastructure, or an infrastructure that contains both IPv4 and IPv6. To communicate with IPv6-only nodes, IPv4-only nodes can use a translation gateway or an IPv4 to IPv6 proxy. Migration is only totally realized when all your IPv4-only nodes are converted to IPv6-only nodes. In RFC 1752, the following migration standards were specified: You can deploy IPv6-only hosts at any time. You can upgrade an existing IPv4 host to IPv6, Read More

Common Methods for Troubleshooting Internet Connectivity With the technology available today, Internet connectivity can be established in various ways: Remote access server Network Address Translation (NAT) Internet Connections Sharing (ICS) A direct connection by using a device such as a modem or network card Because of the various methods in which Internet connectivity can be established, and the manner in which certain organizations are dependent on the Internet for daily business transaction, it is important to have some knowledge on the methods which you can utilize to troubleshoot Internet connectivity Read More

DFS (Distributed File System) provides a mechanism for administrators to create logical views of folders and files, regardless of where those files are physically located on the network. DFS also allows administrators to distribute shared folders and work loads across several servers for more efficient network and server resources use. Fault tolerance network storage resources are also available by using DFS. DFS is a service that provides a single point of reference and a logical tree structure for file system resources that may be physically located anywhere on the network. Read More

Troubleshooting VPN Services Overview Troubleshooting VPNs typically encompass troubleshooting of the following configuration settings, or aspects of your remote access strategy: IP connectivity. Setting up of remote access connections IPSec IP routing To create VPN connections, there are a few requirements that have to be met: VPN services need to be enabled on the server. VPN client software has to be installed on the VPN client. A VPN client utilizes the Internet, tunneling and TCP/IP protocols to establish a connection to the network The server and client have to be Read More

Determining Information Flow Requirements To determine the information flow of the organization, you need to include a number of factors, of which the main ones are listed below. Accessing data or information should be one of the main concerns when planning the network design: The data that needs to be accessed by users. The location of users. The time period when users need to access data. The method by which users access data. A few typical questions which you should ask when determining information flow of the organization are: How Read More

IPv6 stands for Internet Protocol version 6. IPv6 is the latest version of the network-layer protocol for packet-switched networks. The version that is generally used is IPv4. One of the reasons for the upgrade to IPv6 is that it allows greater space and flexibility in assigning IP addresses. For instance, IPv4 is based on a 32-bit address system that limits the number of possible unique addresses to 4,294,967,296. In a few years, the number of available unique addresses will decrease. IPv6 solves this problem by making the number of possible Read More

NWLink Overview NWLink IPX/SPX is the Microsoft implementation of Novell’s NetWare Internetwork Packet Exchange/Sequenced Packet Exchange (IPX/SPX) protocol. NWLink IPX/SPX is simply called NWLink. NWLink is used in Novell NetWare, and can be considered IPX for Windows. NWLink is an IPX/SPX compatible transport protocol that was developed to enable Windows 2000 computers to communicate with NetWare services. It is therefore used when clients running Microsoft operating systems (OSs) need to access resources on NetWare servers. It is also used where clients running NetWare need to access resources on computers running Read More

Understanding the Limitations of IPv4 Before moving on the to an in-depth discussion of IPv6, lets first look at the limitations of IPv4: The IPv4 addresses are somewhat scarce, even though it allows for 4,294,967,296 possible addresses. Because of this limitation, organizations are forced to utilize Network Address Translator (NAT) to map a public IP address to several private IP addresses. NAT typically creates performance and application bottlenecks. The increase in devices that are connected to the Internet would lead to the depletion of IPv4 address space. There is a Read More