6. What is Active Directory?

Active Directory is a network-based object store and service that locates and manages resources, and makes these resources available to authorized users and groups. An underlying principle of the Active Directory is that everything is considered an object people, servers, workstations, printers, documents, and devices. Each object has certain attributes and its own security access control list (ACL). Microsoft's ISA Server (Internet Security and Acceleration Server) is the successor to Microsoft's Proxy Server 2.0 (see proxy server) and is part of Microsoft's .NET support. ISA Server provides the two basic services of an enterprise firewall and a Web proxy/cache server. ISA Server's firewall screens all packet-level, circuit-level, and application-level traffic. The Web cache stores and serves all regularly accessed Web content in order to reduce network traffic and provide faster access to frequently-accessed Web pages. ISA Server also schedules download of Web page updates for non-peak times. ISA Server allows administrators to create policies for regulating usage based on user, group, application, destination, schedule, and content type criteria. ISA Server is designed to work with Windows 2000 and later operating systems and to take advantage of Windows'Kerberos security. ISA Server includes a software development kit (SDK). ISA Server comes in two editions, Standard Edition and Enterprise Edition. Standard Edition is a stand-alone server that supports up to four processors. Enterprise Edition is for large-scale deployments, server array support, multi-level policy, and computers with more than four processors. Licenses are based on the number of processors. Creating protocol rules Administering an ISA Server means creation of suitable arrays, rules and policies. Arrays and policies have already been explained so let us examine the term rules. ISA Server uses two types of rules:

Site and content rule determines if and when content from specific Internet destinations can be accessed by users, Protocol rule determines which packets may or may not access the ISA server.

Apart from the above rules, the following rules can also be defined for ISA server:

Bandwidth (Capacity) rule this will prioritise different types of services using ISA server. This allows administrators to verify which specific www traffic or business-related traffic will be allocated to the available bandwidth. Web publishing rules to publish incoming HTTP, HTTPS, FTP requests and map them as services on the ISA Server. Server publishing with this feature, clients from the public Internet are directed to the ISA Server instead of to the web server. Moreover, the ISA Server may act as the proxy for inbound and outbound traffic between the public Internet clients and the internal web server.

A hub is typically the least expensive, least intelligent, and least complicated of the three. Its job is very simple: anything that comes in one port is sent out to the others. That's it. Every computer connected to the hub "sees" everything that every other computer on the hub sees. The hub itself is blissfully ignorant of the data being transmitted. For years, simple hubs have been quick and easy ways to connect computers in small networks. A switch does essentially what a hub does but more efficiently. By paying attention to the traffic that comes across it, it can "learn" where particular addresses are. For example, if it sees traffic from machine A coming in on port 2, it now knows that machine A is connected to that port and that traffic to machine A needs to only be sent to that port and not any of the others. The net result of using a switch over a hub is that most of the network traffic only goes where it needs to rather than to every port. On busy networks this can make the network significantly faster. Routers are completely different devices. Where a hub or switch is concerned with transmitting frames, a router's job, as its name implies, is to route packets to other networks until that packet ultimately reaches its destination. One of the key features of a packet is that it not only contains data, but the destination address of where it's going. A router is typically connected to at least two networks, commonly two Local Area Networks (LANs) or Wide Area Networks (WAN) or a LAN and its ISP's network, for example, your PC or workgroup and EarthLink. Routers are located at gateways, the places where two or more networks connect. Using headers and forwarding tables, routers determine the best path for forwarding the packets. Router use protocols such as ICMP to communicate with each other and configure the best route between any two hosts. Domain Name Systems Domain Name System (DNS) is one of the industry-standard suite of protocols that comprise TCP/IP. Microsoft Windows Server 2003.DNS is implemented using two software components: the DNS server and the DNS client (or resolver). Both components are run as background service applications. Network resources are identified by numeric IP addresses, but these IP addresses are difficult for network users to remember. The DNS database contains records that map user-friendly alphanumeric names for network resources to the IP address used by those resources for communication. In this way, DNS acts as a mnemonic device, making network resources easier to remember for network users. The Windows Server 2003 DNS Server and Client services use the DNS protocol that is included in the TCP/IP protocol suite. DNS is part of the application layer of the TCP/IP reference model.

What is Subnet Mask? An IP address has two components, the network address and the host address. A subnet mask separates the IP address into the network and host addresses (<network><host>). Subnetting further divides the host part of an IP address into a subnet and host address (<network><subnet><host>). It is called a subnet mask because it is used to identify network address of an IP address by perfoming bitwise AND operation on the netmask. A Subnet mask is a 32-bit number that masks an IP address, and divides the IP address into network address and host address. Subnet Mask is made by setting network bits to all "1"s and setting host bits to all "0"s. Within a given network, two host addresses are reserved for special purpose. The "0" address is assigned a network address and "255" is assigned to a broadcast address, and they cannot be assigned to a host.
MS Outlook Express

MS Outlook is email client software to fetch your emails from mail server. In earlier days it came with internet browsers like IE 4 and IE 5 and later it was combined with operating system like Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows 2000. Outlook Express is designed with open Internet Standards so it supports SMTP (to send emails), POP 3 and IMAP to fetch the emails. (Difference between POP and IMAP) On top of these, outlook express supports the following technologies LDAP, HTML, MHTML, S/MIME, NNTP that help us to read emails without worrying about underlying technologies. Outlook Express supports to receive emails from more than one account into the same application. You can configure Outlook Express to receive emails from more than one account. There are migration tools available to import mail settings, address books from Eudora, Netscape or MS Exchange Server.
Microsoft Office Outlook

Outlook is a standalone application that is integrated into MS Exchange Server and MS Office. It is integrated with email, calendar, contact management, meeting and event management, resource management and limited personal task management. Its an ideal client for business users. We can create inbox rules to organize email messages in a way that we want. As like Outlook Express, here also we can configure more than one email account in the same client. If Outlook is working with Exchange Server, it offers workgroup information sharing, workflow management, group and meeting schedules, public folders and resource management. As like Express, Outlook is also designed to support SMTP, POP3 and IMAP protocols to support Exchange Server or any other Messaging Servers that supports MAPI (Messaging Application Programming Interface). It also supports LDAP, MHTML, NNTP, MIME, S/MIME, vcalendar, vCard, iClendar and full HTML support. Difference Between MS Outlook Express and MS Office Outlook (1) Generally MS Outlook Express comes with operating System and MS office Outlook comes with Office. (2) Both are email clients that support SMTP, POP3 and IMAP (3) Outlook Express is suitable for personal home users and MS office Outlook is suitable for business users. (4) Both support LDAP, MHTML, NNTP, MIME, S/MIME and HMTL.

Outlook is basically for the profession purpose, and has .pst file format But the outlook express is basically for the home purpose, files format is .dbx How to Decide Which Client Best Suits Your Needs When choosing between Outlook Express and Outlook, users and organizations should base their usage decision on the following criteria: Outlook Express Choose Outlook Express if:

You require only Internet e-mail and newsgroup functionality (for versions of Windows later than Microsoft Windows 95, versions of Windows earlier than Microsoft Windows 95, Macintosh, and UNIX platforms). You use or plan to use Office 98 for Macintosh, and you want to take advantage of the integration of Outlook Express with this version of the Office suite.

Outlook Choose Outlook if:

You require advanced Internet standards-based e-mail and discussion group functionality. You require integrated personal calendars, group scheduling, task, and contact management. You require integrated e-mail and calendaring, cross-platform clients for versions of Windows later than Microsoft Windows 95, versions of Windows earlier than Microsoft Windows 95, and Macintosh platforms. You use, or plan to use Office 97, Office 2000, Office XP or Exchange Server and want to take advantage of the integration of Outlook with this version of the Office suite, and the integration with Exchange Server. You require robust, integrated run-time and design-time collaboration capabilities.

What is Active Directory? An active directory is a directory structure used on Microsoft Windows based computers and servers to store information and data about networks and domains. It is primarily used for online information and was originally created in 1996. It was first used with Windows 2000. An active directory (sometimes referred to as an AD) does a variety of functions including the ability to provide information on objects, helps organize these objects for easy retrieval and access, allows access by end users and administrators and allows the administrator to set security up for the directory. Active Directory is a hierarchical collection of network resources that can contain users, computers, printers, and other Active Directories. Active Directory Services (ADS) allow administrators to handle and maintain all network resources from a single location. Active Directory stores information and settings in a central database

In a workgroup:

All computers are peers; no computer has control over another computer.

Each computer has a set of user accounts. To use any computer in the workgroup, you must have an account on that computer.

There are typically no more than ten to twenty computers. All computers must be on the same local network or subnet.

In a domain: One or more computers are servers. Network administrators use servers to control the security and permissions for all computers on the domain. This makes it easy to make changes because the changes are automatically made to all computers.

If you have a user account on the domain, you can log on to any computer on the domain without needing an account on that computer.

There can be hundreds or thousands of computers. The computers can be on different local networks.