Authentication | Designing Secure Web-Based Applications for Microsoft Windows 2000 with CDROM

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Windows 2000 supports many authentication protocols, including those used for dial-up authentication, Internet authentication, and network authentication. In the case of network authentication, Windows 2000 supports two protocols: Windows NT Challenge/Response (also called NTLM) and Kerberos V5.

NTLM is supported by Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows NT, and Windows 2000. In Windows 2000, it is the authentication mechanism used for computer communication between machines running Windows NT and Windows 2000. Kerberos V5 authentication is supported on Windows 2000 when Active Directory is installed, and it is the default authentication protocol.

For more information about NTLM, see "User Authentication with Windows NT" at http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q102/7/16.asp. For an explanation of how Kerberos V5 works in Windows 2000, see Chapter 14, "An Introduction to Kerberos Authentication in Windows 2000."