Chapter 6
Configuring a TCP/IP Network — the Software Side
In This Chapter
Protocols in this chapter: IPv4, IPv6, DNS, DHCP
Installing no more
Checking on IPv4 and IPv6
Configuring TCP/IP in six steps
Setting up clients and servers
Investigating the network files that hold TCP/IP information
Seeing that once again, “people like names, computers like numbers”
Resetting a corrupted TCP/IP stack on Microsoft Windows systems
TCP/IP is software, and just like any software, it has to be installed. This chapter describes the steps needed to get TCP/IP up and running. If you’re lucky, you might have no steps. Yet. After TCP/IP is installed — that’s the time you have to get to work and configure your system. Read on to see what to do, and to examine the contents of some network files that work for you behind the scenes.
If you’re using an operating system or TCP/IP product that’s different from the ones that our examples show, your files may vary slightly from what you see in the figures in this book. Don’t worry. The steps you follow to set up your system are the same, regardless of how a window or command line may look. The files may be in a slightly different location, but the general content and the purpose of those files are the same, regardless of what folder or directory they’re stored in. The principle of RTFM — Read the Fishy Manual that came with your TCP/IP product — always ...
