It’s easy enough to plug a couple
Windows 8 computers together and call it a network, but real-life
networks are seldom so simple, even at home. Networks usually have a
mix of operating systems, and Windows often has to be coaxed into
getting along with them.
On a real-life LAN with multiple OSs, it’s
not enough that computers be capable of coexisting on the same network
cable at the same time. They need to actually work with each other, or internetwork,
so that users of these various systems can share files and printers. At
best, this sharing should occur without anyone even knowing that
alternative platforms are involved. Achieving this kind of seamlessness
can range from effortless to excruciating.
If you’re shopping for such a network
appliance, be very careful to check what format it uses on its disks
and what maximum file size it supports. Some devices support a maximum
file size of only 2GB or 4GB, depending on the disk format and internal
software used. Such a device might be okay for storing documents and
photos, but it will be incapable of storing complete movies and
computer backup files, many of which run 6GB in size or more—often way
more. Other devices use proprietary networking drivers and/or
proprietary disk formats. Personally, I’d only use a NAS device that
uses standard file access protocols (SMB, NFS, and so on) and
a disk format that can be read by Windows or Linux, so that if the
hardware box were to die, I could at least put its hard disk into my
desktop computer and extract its contents.
If a network appliance isn’t in the cards,
you need to get your computers to interoperate directly.
Windows 8 and 7 have some networking features
that weren’t in older versions, and some features have been removed.
With respect to internetworking, this list provides a summary of the
most significant changes since Windows Vista and XP:
• Windows 8 and 7 behave differently
from previous versions of Windows when Password Protected Sharing is
turned off.
• The NetBEUI network protocol is not
available under Windows 8 and 7. This could impact you if your network
includes computers running Windows XP, or—heaven forbid—earlier
versions.
• The Link Level
Discovery Protocol (LLDP) is relatively new to Windows. LLDP lets
Windows eke out a map of the connections between your computers and the
other hardware on your network. LLDP support is available for Windows
XP via a download, and is included in all the more recent versions.
It’s also in Server 2003 and later Server editions. Connections to
computers running older versions of Windows will not be diagrammed on
the network map. Computers running Linux and Mac OS X won’t appear,
either, unless you add a third-party program such as Open LLDP (at http://openlldp.sourceforge.net). Some commercial network-mapping applications (such as LANsurveyor at www.solarwinds.com) also have a Mac LLDP responder.
• Microsoft no longer provides
out-of-the-box support for Novell NetWare (a corporate networking
system). Novell Corporation has a NetWare client that works on Windows
8.
However, although some things change, other
things stay the same. You probably won’t be surprised to learn that the
Network Browser service (the relatively obscure software component
responsible for collecting the list of names of the computers on your
network, the list upon which the old Network Neighborhood display was
based) is still present—and still works only when it feels like it.
