PCTips Box

TCP/IP, an acronym for Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol, is a suite of protocols supported by Microsoft with the Windows family of platforms. Essentially, through its components, TCP/IP is used for communications on both private networks and on the Internet. As far as the world wide web is concerned, the most common aspects of TCP/IP are IPv4 (Internet Protocol version 4) and IPv6. The Redmond company is offering extensive documentation on TCP/IP as it is supported in Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2003 and Window XP. TCP/IP Fundamentals for Microsoft Windows is available for download.

“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 Vista, Windows Server 2008, Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003 families of operating systems,” revealed Keith Combs, Microsoft IT Pro Evangelist, citing an excerpt of the documentation’s description. (more…)

UltraVNC is one of many options for remotely controlling one computer from another across the Internet. Generically, VNC is a cross-platform protocol. For example, you could control a Windows box from Linux. UltraVNC is an implementation of VNC for the PC. The latest version, currently in beta, adds Vista support.

VNC unhelpfully stands for “Virtual Network Computing.” It is a protocol standard for handling remote control. It started life as a Bell Laboratories project, and has become the core of a whole family of open source and commercial products. (more…)

The new Network Map in Windows Vista allows you to easily create a map of all computers on your network and see how they are connected. This works by using the Link Layer Topology Discovery (LLTD) protocol that is only part of Windows Vista.

To help users of mixed environments of both Windows Vista and Windows XP, Microsoft has released the Link Layer Topology Discovery Responder for Windows XP. This will make your Windows XP computers show up in the Network Map in Windows Vista. (more…)