Networking Protocols

 

Choosing a protocol.

Windows 95 can support multiple network protocols, and can share a protocol among the network providers that are installed. You might choose more than one protocol to ensure communication compatibility with all systems in the enterprise. However, choosing multiple protocols can cause more network traffic, more memory used on the local workstations, and more network delays. You probably want to choose a single protocol wherever possible. The following briefly presents some issues for each Windows 95 protocol.

For the IPX/SPX-compatible protocol:

· This protocol is required and installed automatically with Microsoft Client for NetWare. When Windows 95 Setup determines that it cannot install Client for NetWare Networks on a computer running a Novell-supplied network client, Setup still tries to install this protected-mode protocol. For information about how Setup determines whether to install this protocol automatically, see Chapter 9, "Windows 95 on NetWare Networks."

· This protocol cannot be used to configure Windows 95 to support NetWare over ArcNet. Instead, you must use real-mode IPX drivers with NetBIOS support on ArcNet network adapters.

· With this protocol, it is not necessary to load the Novell-supplied VIPX.386 driver, because the Microsoft protocol provides virtualized services to all VMs and applications.

For Microsoft TCP/IP:

· TCP/IP in general has been known to require careful planning and management of the IP address space. However, this problem is vastly reduced when DHCP servers are used to manage assignment of IP addresses for computers running Microsoft TCP/IP.

· If you want to take advantage of DHCP for automatic IP addressing or use WINS for name resolution on computers running Windows 95, the appropriate Windows NT servers must be in place on the network.

· This protocol cannot be used on NetWare networks that require NetWare/IP.

For Microsoft NetBEUI:

· NetBEUI is a nonroutable protocol that cannot cross routers, although it can cross bridges and source routing bridges.

· NetBEUI is optimized for high performance only for use in departmental LANs or LAN segments.

One common method for setting up a network is to use NetBEUI plus a protocol such as TCP/IP on each computer that needs to access computers across a router. If you set NetBEUI as the default protocol, Windows 95 uses NetBEUI for communication within the LAN segment and uses TCP/IP for communication across routers to other parts of the WAN.

Date last updated: 12/04/04