Windows 2000 in the Enterprise
A guide to heterogeneous networking with Windows 2000.
Looking for a textbook for creating a Windows
2000 network? Want to know how make previous versions
of Windows work within a Win2K environment? This book
might just be what you need. It features detailed discussions
of Win2K networking components, including DNS, DDNS, WINS,
QOS and RAS. But if you want to understand how the Active
Directory works within in a network environment, you might
be disappointed.
This book starts off with a brief introduction
to networking. However, if you currently don't understand
routing protocols and the OSI model, this book isn't going
to help you. The purpose of this book, as I understand
it, is to help the reader grasp how components of Win2K
and Windows NT use network protocols in communication
with Novell, Windows and Unix clients for simple network
functions such as file and print sharing and remote access.
Windows 2000 Enterprise Networking
has a textbook feel to it—rather dry and not well
organized. In the middle of the book, there's a chapter
called "Designing and Building Windows NT and 2000 Networks."
Logically this chapter should be at the beginning of the
book and should definitely come before "Upgrading from
Window 9X and NT 4.0" and "Connecting Client Workstations."
"Network Testing and Capacity Planning" should come soon
after "Designing and Building Windows NT and 2000 Networks."
Instead, this is the last chapter of the book-some 400
pages later.
The "Tuning and Troubleshooting" section
mainly discusses the tools that you can use for network
troubleshooting: ping, perfmon, event viewer and so on.
Most, if not all, Windows administrators should already
be familiar with these tools. Disappointingly, this section
leaves out such topics as how to troubleshoot replication
issues, logon problems and DNS problems. There is a nice
section in this chapter that goes through the process
of problem resolution, which will be useful to anyone
who isn't familiar with the logic of troubleshooting.
Overall this book is useful and provides
good information, although there are times when the authors
aren't clear whether they're talking about Windows NT
or Win2K. If you haven't had exposure to DNS, DDNS, WINS,
QOS or RAS these chapters are well worth reading. If I
could make a suggestion to the authors, it would be to,
next time, try to focus on one base operating system and
work more logically.
About the Author
Yolanda R. Reid, MCSE, CCNA, works closely with Win2K, Windows NT, and BackOffice products. As an employee of USI, her specialty is enterprise systems and designing Win2K infrastructures.