Introduction to Administering Network and Sharing Center

Applies To: Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 7

This guide explains how to administer Network and Sharing Center during the operations phase of the information technology (IT) life cycle. If you are not familiar with this guide, you can review the following sections of this introduction for an overview of the guide, its contents, and how and when the guide is useful.

When to Use This Guide

You can use this guide when:

• You want to create, configure, or manage a network connection to a wireless or remote network.

• You want to configure network parameters, connections, and features for client computers that are deployed on a managed network.

This guide includes management-level knowledge that is relevant to different roles within an IT organization, including the roles of IT operations managers and administrators.

In addition, this guide contains more detailed procedures that are designed for operators who have varied levels of expertise and experience. Although the procedures provide operator guidance from start to finish, operators must have a basic proficiency with the Microsoft Management Console (MMC) and snap-ins and know how to start administrative programs and access the command line. If operators are not familiar with Network and Sharing Center, it might be necessary for IT planners or IT managers to review the relevant operations in this guide and provide the operators with parameters or data that must be entered when the operation is performed.

How to Use This Guide

The operations areas are divided into the following types of content:

• Objectives are high-level goals for managing, monitoring, optimizing and securing Network Center. Each objective consists of one or more high-level tasks that describe how the objective is accomplished. In this guide, Manage Network Connectionsis an example of an objective.

• Tasks are used to group related procedures and provide general guidance for achieving the goals of an objective. In this guide, Connect to a network is an example of a task.

• Procedures provide step-by-step instructions for completing tasks. In this guide, Display the Network Map is an example of a procedure topic.

If you are an IT manager who is delegating tasks to operators within your organization, you might want to:

• Read through the objectives and tasks to determine how to delegate permissions and whether you need to install tools before operators perform the procedures for each task.

• Ensure that you have all the tools installed where operators can use them before assigning tasks to individual operators.

• Create “tear sheets” for each task that operators perform in your organization, as needed. You can copy and paste the task and its related procedures into a separate document, and then either print these documents or store them online, depending on your requirements.

What this guide does not provide

This guide does not provide conceptual information about networking technologies.

For security reasons, specific network features included with Windows are not installed by default. Install these features only if you need to use them, because they open additional network ports through the firewall, and increase the exposure of your computer to others on the network. In addition, these technologies are not installed using Network and Sharing Center and are not documented in this guide:

• Internet Information Services (IIS), which includes a Web and FTP server

• LPD and LPR Print services for printing to and from UNIX-based computers

• RIP Listener, which supports Routing Information Protocol version 1

• Services for NFS, which supports file sharing to and from UNIX-based computers

• Simple TCP/IP services, which provide miscellaneous network features

• Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP), a common network management protocol

• Telnet Client and Server, which are common protocols used to access remote computers

• Trivial File Transfer Protocol (TFTP), a non-secure file transfer protocol

See Also

Concepts

Administer Network and Sharing Center