It's very common these days for us
to move between different kinds of networks throughout the day,
and Windows can adjust to these changes
because there are different network locations that
can be automatically configured in Windows.
In Windows 7, these network locations
are called the Home network, the Work network,
and the Public network.
On the Home network, everything is trusted.
You're at home and everything that's
within your house is something that you can probably
trust to be on the network.
If you're configured to be on a Work network,
you can see other devices but your system cannot join
a HomeGroup.
HomeGroups are only available when you're on a Home network.
And a Public network is one where you're out in public.
You're at an airport, you're at a coffee shop,
and you are effectively invisible.
Other people are not able to share
files that are on your system or access anything that might be
on your Windows configuration.
In Windows 8.1 these network locations
have been simplified a bit.
There is a Private network, which
is similar to the Home network that you had in Windows 7,
where everything can be shared and you
can connect to any of the devices on that network.
And then there is a Public network
where there is no sharing or connectivity between devices
on that network.
To be able to view these settings in Windows 8 or 8.1,
you can open up the Charms, go to Settings,
look at the network interface and view
the connection settings for the interface that interests you.
One very convenient network technology in Windows
is the ability to view the desktop of a remote device.
There are two primary ways to do this in Windows.
One is through remote assistance.
This is when you need a one-time access to a computer.
You set up a single-use password and someone
is able to connect to your computer, even
through a network address translated firewall.
You don't have to make any special firewall settings.
Remote assistance is able to work
without any special settings.
If you need something that is available 24 by 7,
then you need to configure remote desktop connection.
This is for ongoing access and is usually
configured by someone who needs to administer
that remote device.
You're authenticating locally on that computer,
so you need the correct authentication credentials
to be able to connect via remote desktop.
And then you also need to configure a firewall
to properly forward the ports so that you can connect
to that remote desktop system.
One of the most important functions of our computers
these days is the ability to connect to the internet.
And if you're in a large environment,
you may not have the ability to directly connect
to devices and other servers that might be on the internet.
Instead, there might be a proxy that's
between you and the internet.
This is a go-between.
You make requests of the proxy, the proxy
then performs the requests to the internet.
When it receives the response, it
makes sure that the response is something
that you can properly view, and it sends that information
to your computer.
You would configure these proxy settings in the Control Panel
under Internet Properties.
Under these settings, you would configure
the IP addresses of the proxy and you would also
include any exceptions.
Not everything can be proxied, so you
want to be sure that any of the communications that
go outside of the proxy are properly
defined in this exception list.
When you want to transfer files from one computer
to another on a Windows network, you use a network share.
This is going to create a folder that anyone can connect to
across the network.
We commonly view these folders using something
like Windows Explorer to be able to list out
all of the shares that are out on the network.
To be able to use one of these shares,
we commonly will map the share that's
on the network to a drive letter that's local on our computer.
So we choose a drive letter that's not currently
in use, say drive M, and we would
say that drive M is going to map to this particular share
that exists on another device across the network.
There is a way that you can also hide shares on the network
by putting a dollar sign at the end of the share name.
This is not a security feature, but it does prevent somebody
from seeing those shares if they're simply
looking for what shares might be available on a remote device.
To see what shares have been configured on your computer,
you can go to Control Panel under Administrative Tools
and choose Computer Management.
Another common feature with Windows networking
is the ability to share a printer that might
be connected to your computer.
Instead of putting printers at everyone's desk,
you can put one printer in place and have everybody
on the network print to your computer
where the printer might be located.
This is something that you can define in Windows Explorer.
You simply add a printer, and you can define it
as a network connected printer.
To define one of your local printers
as now a network accessible printer,
you can go to Windows Explorer and add a printer.
You would choose to add a network, wireless,
or Bluetooth printer, and then it
will give you a list of available printers
that you could share on the network.
In our case, we'll choose this Dymo label writer
and I'll click Next.
And then it will tell me that I've successfully
added that particular printer on my computer,
and from this point, anybody who accesses
the network is able to see that that printer's available.
And they can print directly to that printer
from their workstation.