Mastering Windows Server® 2008 Networking Foundations

Introduction

Hello and welcome to the Mastering Windows Server 2008 series and in particular to this volume, Mastering Windows Server 2008 : Networking Foundations ! Now, I know that many people don't read introductions, but I beg of you: please stay with me for at least this page or two ... or you may waste your money. I say that because some of you reading this would be best served by skipping this book and going directly to the second book in the series, Mastering Windows Server 2008: Essential Technologies.

Don't Buy This Book If ...

This is the 13th in a series of books about Windows Server that I've written since 1993, and as such, I'm lucky to have a group of loyal return readers for which I'm very grateful — and it's to you folks that I'm talking in this section. For a number of reasons I'll get to a bit later in this introduction, I've divided the Mastering Windows Server 2008 book into three books. This is the first book, and it's mainly aimed at those just joining us in Microsoft networking. In this book, we ("we" meaning my coauthors and I, that is — my veins, I fear, completely lack royal blood) show you things like how to put together two very basic Windows Server 2008 systems so that we can get some initial experience with NET USE-ing, the basics of the four ways you can control Windows, how Windows security works (logons, file permissions, passwords), what an IP address is, how to set up a DHCP server to provide those IP addresses, the difference between a DNS and ...