Built-in Functions Versus Network Add-ons

You may want to enable clients to access networking services that aren't built into the Microsoft Windows client software. Giving users access to this type of functionality always requires additional software, such as the software necessary to access NFS. Although Windows 95, 98, SE, Me, NT, 2000, XP, and 2003 can all support NFS, that support is not built into those operating systems. Therefore, providing users with access to NFS requires obtaining, installing, and configuring additional software on their computers.

Adding new software to network clients, such as installing an application on a Windows operating system, is far less traumatic (and more common) than the situation in the preceding section, in which you had to change out the Microsoft client software for Novell client software. The application must be compatible with that operating system, and you must install and configure it correctly. However, software that uses only existing protocols and drivers on a Windows machine augments the Windows built-in capabilities, rather than replacing (or displacing) them. Therefore, adding compatible products, such as QUALCOMM's Eudora e-mail package, Ipswitch's WS_FTP Pro file transfer program, or the Netscape Navigator Web browser, to Windows XP and Windows 2003 is quite easy.

Nevertheless, many network administrators try to avoid adding unnecessary protocols and services to Windows. They do so because each additional protocol and service consumes system resources, such as memory and disk space. Granted, additional protocols and services may not use much memory if they're never or rarely used, but disk space is something services always consume !

Tip 

One of the most profound ways to improve the performance of a Windows 2003 machine is to eliminate unnecessary protocols and services, as well as the bindings that tie protocols and services together. By default, Windows 2003 binds all protocols and services, even when those bindings may not be necessary (or wanted). Therefore, a bit of post-installation cleanup can improve performance as well as remove unwanted software connections. This is true of every version of Windows since Windows for Workgroups 3.11. (Managing bindings is covered further in Chapter 18.)

Adding third-party client applications or services to Windows machines is okay. This is especially true because most such software uses Windows built-in networking capabilities under the hood.