TCPIP and Other Network Protocols

TCP/IP and Other Network Protocols

Because TCP/IP is the standard network protocol suite, IP is the protocol installed by default on Windows XP Professional. For backward compatibility, Windows XP Professional also supports NetBIOS over TCP/IP (NetBT) and Internetwork Packet Exchange/Sequenced Packet Exchange (IPX/SPX).

Benefits of TCP/IP

Windows XP Professional includes a complete implementation of the standard, routable TCP/IP protocol suite. TCP/IP provides the following benefits:

• Support for Internet connectivity.

• Ability to route packets, which allows you to divide networks into subnets to optimize networking performance or to facilitate network management.

• Connectivity across interconnected networks that use different operating systems and hardware platforms, including communication with many non-Microsoft systems, such as Internet hosts, Apple Macintosh systems, IBM mainframes, UNIX systems, and Open Virtual Memory System (VMS) systems.

• Support for automatic TCP/IP configuration by using Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP).

• Support for Automatic Private IP Addressing (APIPA), allowing computers in small networks without a DHCP server to automatically assign themselves IP addresses.

• Support for automatic mapping of IP addresses to NetBIOS names by using Windows Internet Name Service (WINS) servers.

• Support for NetBIOS over TCP/IP (NetBT).

• Performance enhancements, including a larger default TCP receive window size and selective acknowledgments.

• Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), File Transfer Protocol (FTP), and other communications protocols used for Internet access.

• Alternate IP Configuration, a new feature that allows users to have a DHCP assigned IP address as well as a static IP address mapped to the same network adapter and thus allows the user to roam between different networks seamlessly.

When you install Windows XP Professional, TCP/IP and NetBIOS over TCP/IP (NetBT) are installed by default. Either can be configured during or after installation. IPX/SPX is also included with Windows XP Professional and can be installed if needed.

For more information about features of TCP/IP in Windows XP Professional, see Configuring TCP/IP in this book.

Configuring the Protocol Binding Order

If multiple network protocols are installed on your Windows XP Professional based computer, you can determine the binding order of each protocol for each service that uses the protocol. The binding order determines which protocol a service uses to connect to another client or service. To reduce the time needed to find required clients and services, place the most-frequently-used protocol first.

Multiple services can bind with each protocol, but the service that controls access to the network is the Client for Microsoft Networks, shown in Figure 20-4. The binding order appears on the Adapters and Bindings tab of the Advanced Settings property sheet of a selected network adapter.

Figure 20-4: Configure protocol binding order