Samba 3.0.23c includes many important new features, including new support for BUILTIN/Users and BUILTIN/Administrators groups, a gateway service that makes UNIX daemons appear as Windows services, feature that maps UNIX log files into Windows-style event logs.

The most effective way to deal with uncontrolled Web traffic is to implement some kind of caching proxy server, such as Squid, or Microsoft's Internet Security and Acceleration Server, or any of the other dozen-plus similar offerings, and then force all client-side Web requests to go through the proxy server. Properly implemented, these servers can provide administrators with a single choke-point for all Web traffic, thereby providing administrators a way to actively manage the traffic.

The most important standards over the next two years will be those that are supported by the IETF, implemented by vendors, and ultimately adopted by users.

Because routing protocols determine the path of IP packets, they also dictate whether packet delivery is timely or even successful. As a result, these services also control how well the higher-layer protocols, like TCP and SMTP, perform or if they are instead encumbered by lost packets, slow delivery, duplicate datagrams or any of the other problems that can result from routing troubles.

This data comes from a simple perl script, which read through all 32,000+ newsgroups on my ISP's server and counted up each of the unique "charset=" tags that it found in the message headers. 4,024,487 messages were processed over a period which spanned 73 hours and 23 minutes (over my 1.5Mb DSL line).

DHCP is supported in most networking devices and software--from ISDN routers to firewalls to every mainstream operating system on the market--and networks of all sizes are using DHCP to help manage their infrastructure equipment. But despite a broad level of support for the protocol, surprisingly few DHCP installations go beyond its most basic features. This article will provide some tips and techniques for using DHCP to maximize network automation.

Windows 2000 uses Dynamic DNS to add and delete resource records in DNS on the fly, letting Windows 2000 systems (or a DHCP server) modify host-name-to-address mappings dynamically without using NetBIOS queries. In addition, Active Directory systems use the DNS Service Location resource record for registering and locating the special-purpose servers, such as the Windows 2000 Active Directory domain controllers and catalog servers.

IP is an unreliable protocol, and as such, delivery is not guaranteed to occur. However, sometimes a problem crops up that will prevent all datagrams from getting through to their destination. When these kind of non-transient errors occur, IP uses the Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) for informing the sending system of the problem, so that it can inform the user or application of the fatal error.

IP can be thought of as being like a national delivery service that gets packages from a sender to a recipient, with the sender being oblivious to the routing and delivery mechanisms used by the delivery agent. The sender simply hands the package to the delivery agent, who then moves the package along until it is delivered. That's also how IP works: a system creates an IP datagram, drops it into the network, and leaves it up to the intermediary IP devices to deliver the datagram to the destination system.

In order for IP-enabled systems to communicate with each other on the same network, they must first be able to identify the hardware addresses of the other devices. This service is provided by the Address Resolution Protocol. Other ARP services include providing an IP address via Reverse ARP (RARP), advertising a new IP address via Gratuitous ARP (GARP), checking for duplicate addresses via DHCP-style ARP, and more.

Under the heading of Quality of Service (QoS), a variety of technologies promise administrators improved control over the data that travels across their networks, though none provide more bandwidth or less latency. Instead, they help you manage your existing resources so important traffic flows smoothly. In this article, we will help you pinpoint the most appropriate technologies for enterprisewide traffic management.

There are several TCP elements you can pick to tweak performance, but the most important one is the TCP window size; it dictates how much data a system can send at any given time. Large windows allow a sending system to transmit much more data than if the window were set at a smaller value. In contrast, small windows constrict the amount of data being exchanged, which can result in suboptimal utilization.

When people hear the term IPmulticasting, they usually equate it with multimedia--Internet-based audio and video feeds on their corporate networks. But IP multicasting also is useful with a variety of corporate-class networking services, including the Network Time Protocol, Router Discovery and Microsoft Corp.'s WINS (Windows Internet Name Service). Simply put, allowing and encouraging the use of multicast traffic offers more flexibility and less overhead.

I haven't written anything in a while, but that just means I've been really really busy, which is a good thing. Since I'm going to remain busy throughout the summer, I thought it might be best to send out a summary of my current projects, and share some of the lessons that I'm learning in this work.

When lost data is a problem (due to congestion or link failure), the use of the Selective Acknowledgment option can help quickly recover the data transfer. And, when combined with the Timestamp and Window Scale options, TCP virtual circuits can perform substantially better than they could in the past, particularly when used with slow and problematic links.

Support for forward-compatibility in network design is becoming a crucial issue, particularly as new technologies that push the envelope of network utilization are being deployed. As a result, many of the core elements of today's data networks are being retrofitted to allow these new technologies to work reliably. In some cases, entirely new protocols are being developed to get around those protocols that are so inflexible that they cannot accommodate any sort of tweaking.

To handle network congestion across your entire network, you must first provide for the prioritization of IP traffic. Doing this effectively raises a series of design questions. Does your internal network support IP-prioritization services? Does your WAN equipment? What about your Internet service provider? What about the infrastructure at the other end of the connection? If any device between two systems cannot provide IP-prioritization services, you won't be able to implement an end-to-end solution.

Internet technologies have lowered the barriers-to-entry considerably, allowing companies of every shape and size to build dynamic, cooperative business-to-business applications over the Internet. But we lack an open, universally-accepted database exchange protocol that allows this to happen.

If there were four different and incompatible versions of HTTP, the Web would have never been adopted as rapidly as it has. The same is true of all the successful standards, from SMTP to DNS. Without a similar multi-vendor standard for network file- and print-services, it seems unlikely that a widely-supported protocol will ever emerge.

In order for NetBIOS applications and services to run across a TCP/IP network, NetBIOS must see names while IP must see numeric addresses, although neither is allowed to use the other directly. A layer between the two must map NetBIOS names to IP addresses and convert IP addresses back to NetBIOS names. This layer is known as NetBIOS-over-TCP/IP (NBT).

Many companies agree that the Internet is a decent, low-cost, dial-up solution for mobile and remote users. Rather than buying and managing dedicated modem pools and dial-up services for all these users, many companies would rather use the Internet as a 'free' connection--one that users can access from anywhere, saving in long-distance, equipment and personnel costs.

WAN managers will tell you that their number one problem is managing NetWare traffic. Those RIP and SAP packets are killing bandwidth, and no simple solution is in sight. Filtering them out on a one-by-one basis is an administrative nightmare, while trying to implement NLSP and Packet Burst technology is more work than most people are willing to invest. The result: Most managers just turn off the NetWare services on their WAN and call it a cheap victory.

Windows for Workgroups' native networking architecture provides users in a small local area network with limited file- and printer-sharing capabilities. Users can connect to other Windows for Workgroups PCs, and use other systems' shared resources. This functionality is a result of the combined functionality offered by a collection of various networking components.