The XP User's Guide to Windows Vista, Part 4: Networking and Resource Sharing

1. Setting Up Networking

Vista can store multiple network locations or profiles, something that was only really possible in XP through third-party software.  If you're on the road, for instance, you can use a different network setup with different firewall, file-sharing or device configurations.

When you first install Vista, it'll note your network configuration and make a best guess as to what kind of network it's attached to.  If you disagree, you can change the settings manually.

[The above interface is also available by clicking "Customize" in the Network and Sharing Center, described in the next section.]

Once you're connected, you'll see a Tray icon much like the one in XP.  Hover over it and you'll see your network connection information.

The "Local and Internet" access descriptor lets you know what the scope of the network access you have is.  If, for instance, you only wind up with an auto-assigned IP address due your DHCP server not responding, you'll get "Local Only".

If you're using a wireless network, you'll see connection strength and the name of the currently-used wireless network.

Click on the tray icon and you'll get a context menu for your network.

[When you hover over an icon in the Tray in Vista, you now get a fairly consistent set of pop-ups that tend to have more information than they did before.  Click on them and you usually also get a pop-up of the same kind that has contextual options.]

Summary: The network should configure itself out of the box.  If not, you can always do it manually.

2. The Networking and Sharing Center

When you click on "Network" from the Start button, or browse to it from the Control Panel, you'll be greeted with the equivalent of the My Network Places icon in XP:

Click the "Network and Sharing Center" icon in the toolbar and you'll bring up this new interface:

You can also get to the Networking and Sharing Center by right-clicking on Network in the Start menu and selecting Properties.

2.1. The Network Map

At the top of the Network and Sharing Center window you'll see a quick diagram of whatever network you're currently connected to.  If you click "View full map", you'll get a diagram of all the network-connected devices in your LAN, as best as Vista can reconstruct their relationships.  The map is mainly informational.

[Note the two other computers which are in the LAN, but not in the actual map.  That may be because Vista can't determine how their networking is provisioned.]

Summary: Not essential but interesting; look out for non-Vista machines showing up wrong.

2.2. Customize

Click "Customize" and you'll get the "Customize network settings" you saw earlier.  There, you can set what type of network this is -- public or private -- or edit the icon.

The "Merge or Delete Network Locations" icon lets you get rid of spurious network references (for instance, a wireless connection you're not using anymore).

Summary: Not too hard to figure out.

2.3. View Status

The "View Status" link next to the network connection name brings up a screen which is basically the old Properties page for the network device being used.

[Note that the Properties and Disable buttons have UAC icons.]

Summary: Familiar territory.

2.4. Sharing and Discovery

The "Sharing and Discovery" section is where you may end up doing most of your tweaking, and if you hated having to jump all over the place in XP to set this stuff up, you're going to be very happy.  Click the little arrow icons to the right of each item to expand them and see their properties (aside from "on" or "off").

2.4.1 Network discovery

Network discovery is essentially a new name for all of the behaviors that were controlled by NetBIOS (i.e., File and Print Sharing).  Here, you can turn it on or off without having to dig down through the TCP/IP settings for a given network adapter.

If you need to change workgroups, you can also do so from here by clicking "Change settings" next to the workgroup name.

Summary: This adds a level of granularity to the way the network can be presented and explored that previously required a bit of tweaking in XP.

2.4.2. File sharing

File sharing (and printer sharing) can also be explicitly turned on or off from the networking panel.

Just turning on network discovery doesn't also automatically turn on file sharing.  This way, you can turn on network discovery and see the rest of the network without automatically exposing filesharing.

So, by default, file-sharing is turned off.  If you browse the Network icon in Explorer when this is the case, you'll see a warning about it, and be prompted to turn it on:

Click on the bar and you'll get a prompt that says "Turn on network discovery and file sharing" (with the UAC label).  Alternatively, you can select "Open the Network and Sharing Center" and enable network discovery and sharing manually, as above.

When you want to share out a folder, just right-click on it and hit Share as you would in XP.  When you do this in Vista, you'll see a dialog that'll ask you what users you want to share this folder for.

Click on the drop-down to select new users (they have to be users who have accounts and passwords on that system), and click Add to add them.  You, the logged-in user, are added by default -- so if you're just sharing for yourself, click Share to set things up.

Nominally, when the sharing process has been set up, you'll receive a confirmation:

However, you should be mindful of what happens if you try to share out a folder that is within your user profile directory -- for instance, in your Documents folder.  Instead of sharing out that specific folder as a network share, the wizard goes to the top of the folder hierarchy, shares out that folder, and provides you with a pathname to the actual folder you specified.

This is extremely counter-intuitive, in my opinion.  The default behavior should be to create a share directly to that folder, not a top-level share with a network path that you have to tediously drill down through!  It's not only a bigger hassle, it's theoretically less secure, and it creates many more problems than it solves.  (Granted, you can just map a network drive on the other computer directly to that share, but that implies that the other person is trustworthy enough not to go spelunking through the whole of your hard drive in the first place.)

I've experimented with this function a bit and from what I can tell, the reason for this is because it's a special folder within a user profile.  Again, If you share out a top-level folder (i.e., a folder right off the root of the drive), it'll be shared directly out, and won't cause as much of a problem.

And fortunately, you can still create a direct folder share from a special user folder; it's just not done through this particular interface.  If you want to do that, right-click on the folder and select Properties | Sharing | Advanced Sharing.

The other very annoying thing about doing things this way is that the default share permissions are Everyone | Read-Only; you'll need to manually add read/write by clicking Permissions.

Now, when you have a top-level folder shared out in this fashion, right-clicking on it and hitting Share again will bring up a "Stop Sharing" dialog:

Click "Stop sharing" and the share is turned off (after a UAC confirmation).

Summary: Folder sharing (and unsharing) has been made slightly easier, but watch out for what happens if you try to share out something in your profile directory!

2.4.3. Public folder sharing

Public folder sharing allows anyone on the network to browse and access the contents of the system's Public folder.  If you don't want to go through the hassle of sharing out individual folders, you can move what you want to share into the Public folder and expose it to the network (which is I think what Microsoft would rather people do instead of having people arbitrarily sharing out other folders).

You can see the Public folder in Explorer; it's one of the top-level options in the folder tree.  There are already subfolders within Public for different kinds of media and whatnot, which makes them that much easier to work with.

The three settings for public folder sharing might need some explaining.  When you turn on sharing, anyone with network access can look in the public folder, regardless of whether they have a user account or not.  When you turn it off, no one can access the public folder from the network, but they can access it locally if they sit down at the console and log in as any user.

Summary: Fairly straightforward, but be mindful of what you drop into the Public Folders.

2.4.4. Printer sharing

Sharing out installed printers can also be enabled or disabled through this panel.

Note that if you have no printers, or if you only have the Fax or the Microsoft XPS Document Writer (installed with Office), the printer sharing option will be disabled.  (The Fax and XPS Writer drivers can't be shared out.)

If you want to share out a specific printer, it's done much the same as in XP: right-click on the printer in the Control Panel | Printer window, and click on "Change sharing options" (UAC) to start sharing.  If you do that when Printer Sharing is turned off in the Network screen, it'll be enabled automatically.

Summary: Not all that different from the existing printer-sharing system, although there's now a central place to globally enable or disable sharing for all printers.

2.4.5. Password-protected sharing

This option, on by default, insures that only users with a valid user account and password can access file and printer shares.  If you turn this off, any user can access file and printer shares, so leave it on for safety's sake.

Summary: Don't turn this one off unless you have a valid reason.

2.4.6. Media sharing

Enabling this option lets you share out media stored on the computer to other Windows machines.  (This option's actually worthy of a topic in itself, so I'll save it for future discussion.)

2.5. Revealing shared folders

If you want to see all the folders you currently have shared out, click on "Show me all the shared network folders on this computer".  This will bring you to your computer's icon in the Network window, and from there you can right-click on any individual share and modify it.

Summary: Nothing unusual here.

This next set of sections covers the text links on the left-hand side of the Networking window.  One big problem I have with these links is that they are not as self-describing as they could be -- what's the difference between connecting to a network, managing a network, setting up a connection or a network, and managing network connections?  Right there we have four highly interchangeable descriptions which are likely to simply confuse a novice user (or even some experts), and if Vista is supposed to be all the easier to use, this isn't going to endear people.

So before I go any further, let me clear up just what those links do.

• "Connect to a network": Allows you to connect the computer to a wireless network or a VPN connection.  This is not used to manage hardware; it assumes that you have whatever network hardware you're using set up, turned on, or plugged in.
• "Manage wireless networks": This lets you edit the list of wireless networks that this computer can connect to.  If you want to delete an existing wireless network reference (for instance, from a business trip), connect to a network you know is in rage, create a new wireless network reference from scratch, or create an ad hoc (computer-to-computer) network, go here.
• "Set up a connection or a network": This is the most open-ended option.  If you've just installed network hardware in the computer and it hasn't been configured, start here and click on "Connect to the Internet".  There are also links to many other network control options, such as setting up a dial-up networking connection or connecting to a workplace VPN.  The "connect to a network" option is partly redundant to this.
• "Manage network connections": This brings up a view that's closest to the Network Connections view in XP.  It shows each network adapter (real or virtual) and lets you change their settings.

2.6. Connect manually to a network

Click this and you'll get a list of all the available networks that can be found at the moment.  The drop-down lets you choose which types of networks to scan (the default is "all"), and the revolving-arrows icon button forces a refresh of the networks.

Summary: A quick way to connect to any networks that ought to be immediately visible in the area.  Also useful for connecting to a VPN that's been set up already.

2.7. Manage wireless networks

Use this to sort through the list of wireless networks that you've already got set up in the computer, or to add new ones by hand (for instance, if you want to add a network that's not broadcasting its SSID).

The properties for a wireless network -- its encryption type, its connection behavior -- can be edited by right-clicking on the network name and selecting Properties.  You can't change the network name in that view, but you can do that by right-clicking and selecting Rename.

The option "Connect even if the network is not broadcasting" should be checked off if you're using a wireless network that doesn't broadcast its SSID for security's sake.

If you select a network and then click "Adapter properties", you'll get the exact same pane you get in XP when you right-click on a network adapter and select Properties.

If you click on "Profile Types", you can edit how network profiles are handled -- they can either be set globally, or per-user.  If you're really the only person using the computer, or it's not likely to be moved from location to location, leave this setting as-is.

If you click "Add" (to add a new wireless connection), you'll get three options:

• Add a network in range.  All the available public networks in range will be scanned and listed.  This is the best way to search manually for a variety of advertised networks in a public place.

• Manually create a network profile.  This is the best way to manually add the SSID for a network that you know exists.

• Create an ad hoc network.  Choose this and you'll set up a network that listens for other peers to connect directly, for quick-and-dirty machine-to-machine networking.  You'll need to create a network name and supply any security information to be used as well.

Summary: Use "Manage wireless networks" when you want to manage both wireless networks and their related adapters in one view.

2.8. Manage network connections

Click on this view and you'll get a list of all the network adapters installed, and their attendant network connections.  This includes things like Bluetooth networks and virtual networking adapters.

Side note: You may have noticed that the 1394 (Firewire) networking component is no longer installed.  I did in fact use the Firewire network a couple of times to transfer files from machine to machine, but it seems to have been quietly dropped from Vista --especially since gigabit Ethernet is now widely available.  It might still be possible to add it back in manually, but we'll have to wait and see until Vista is released to see if that's the case.

Right-clicking on a connection and selecting Status brings up another panel that's essentially the same as one we saw in XP.

Summary: The closest thing to the old Network Connections window in XP, with many of the same behaviors.

2.9. Set up a connection or network

I mentioned that this is the broadest and most open-ended option, so it's probably best used by experts only who understand the implication of each choice.

• Connect to the Internet: If you don't already have an Internet connection set up on that computer, click this to get started.  This is best if you've just added new network hardware to a computer and want to get connected.
• Set up a wireless network or access point.  This steps you through setting up an in-home network, including setting up your wireless router.