Windows includes a number of different features to connect to different network technologies. In this video, you’ll learn about VPN connections, wireless networks, wired connections, WWAN links, proxy settings, network locations, network paths, mapping drives, and metered connections.
Windows has a number of different ways to configure new network connections. One of the easiest is through the Control Panel. You can choose Network and Sharing Center and set up a new connection or network. From there, you can select to connect to the internet, set up a new network, or connect to a workplace.
There are also similar options under the Windows Settings and Network and Internet category. This connection setup page provides a wizard that takes you through all of the settings that you need to input for that particular network type. And there are many different network types. You can connect directly to the network with Ethernet. You can set up a VPN connection, a dial-up connection, and more.
VPN stands for Virtual Private Network, and it’s a way to communicate through a public network using encryption to protect all of your data. For example, you might have a corporate network, which has file servers and printers and other resources. And you might be at a coffee shop. Obviously, the network inside of your corporate network is very secure. But the network at the coffee shop is effectively wide open for everybody.
To be sure that we can keep all of our data protected through the network, we’re going to encrypt all of this communication that we’re sending back and forth to our laptop. We do this by configuring a VPN client. That client software is running on our laptop, and it’s encrypting all of the communication that’s going through the network and ending up at a VPN concentrator that’s managed by your corporate network.
The concentrator takes all of that encrypted data, decrypts it, and sends it to the resources inside of your corporate network. To be able to send a response back to your laptop, the process repeats by encrypting all of the data on the concentrator, sending it across the network, and sending it, finally, to your laptop, where it is decrypted for your local use.
The VPN concentrator that you’re using may require a separate set of software that you would install onto your laptop. But Windows also includes a built-in VPN client that might also apply. You would find that under the Setup, Connection, or Network dialog box and choose to connect to a workplace which allows you to set up a dial-up or a VPN connection. If you select the option to connect to a workplace, it will ask you if you’d like to use your internet connection, which is a VPN, or a dial-up line.
In this case, we’re going to connect to a VPN Connection. It then asks for an internet address of the VPN concentrator. In this example, it’s vpn.example.com. And you can give it a name of VPN Connection. You can choose to use a smartcard with this that adds additional authentication to the VPN communication. You can remember your credentials. And then you can allow other people to use this connection as well.
The smart card integration is an additional multi-factor authentication. This might include something you know which is your password, something you have, which would be your smart card. And if you’re integrating any type of biometrics, such as a fingerprint, it would be something you are. We would then click the Create button. And if we wanted to connect to this VPN, we can enable and disable it from the Network Status icon that’s in the system tray of your Windows desktop.
On most wireless connections, we simply select the wireless network we’d like to connect to and then provide the appropriate password. But there are other configuration settings that might apply, especially if you’re in a business. For example, you might need to specify the name of the wireless network or the SSID. That refers to the Service Set Identification, and that’s effectively the name of the wireless network.
You would then choose the security type that is used on that wireless network. And this is the type of encryption that will be used over this wireless connection. We would also include an encryption type. On older wireless networks, we used to use TKIP. But most wireless networks you connect to these days will be AES. And then, lastly, we would include any security key information. If this is a local network at home, then you’ll probably have WPA2 or WPA3. And you would have a personal connection which uses a PSK or a Pre-Shared Key.
If you’re in an enterprise, then you’re using a centralized authentication, which is the same WPA2 or WPA3, but it is in an enterprise configuration that uses a type of authentication known as 802.1x. This authentication type will connect to a central authentication server to check your centralized username and password so that you can use the same username that you use for everything else in your organization.
Wired connections are relatively straightforward. You plug an Ethernet cable into the back of your computer, and you connect that to the rest of your network. That direct connection is usually the fastest. And in the world of Windows networking, the fastest connection is always the default connection. So if you’re connected simultaneously to an Ethernet network, a wireless network, and a wireless wide-area network. It’s more than likely that your Ethernet network is the fastest, which means it will be the default connection.
To set specific configuration parameters of the wired network, we can right-mouse click on the Ethernet adapter, and choose the option for Properties. All of the properties allow you to change configuration of the adapter, the Microsoft networking settings. And in this case, we’re going to select the TCP/IP version 4 settings. If we choose the properties of that link, we can apply a manual IP address. Or we can specify to obtain an IP address automatically from a DHCP server.
We can also receive DNS server addresses automatically from the DHCP server. Or we can manually add them ourself. And if you’d like to add a separate configuration, just in case the DHCP server is not available, we would add that under the tab for Alternate Configuration where you can specify an Automatic Private IP Address, or APIPA, or you can manually configure the IP address settings in this window. If you then connect to the network and DHCP is not available, it will use all of the settings that you’ve configured in the alternate configuration tab.
Another type of connectivity is using the cellular networks that we normally associate with our smartphones and our tablets. This is referred to as a Wireless Wide Area Network, or a WWAN connection. This could use a physical network interface card, like this hardware adapter that we see on our screen. Or it may be something that we’re plugging into a USB interface. You might also connect to a wireless wide area network using your smartphone. You can connect via tethered connection or use your smartphone as a hotspot to be able to gain access to the internet.
If you’re using a hardware adapter, either one that’s built internal to your system or one that you plug into USB, it might require third-party software to connect to the network. So make sure you check the documentation of your device to confirm that you have all of the software that corresponds to the hardware that you’re using.
Proxy servers sit on your network as an intermediate device between you and the rest of the network. This is often used as a security tool to protect you from the internet. Because the proxy server is sitting in the middle of the conversation, it can send requests on your behalf, receive the answer to those requests, confirm that the answer is legitimate and something that won’t harm your computer, and then send you the response from that request.
You can configure these proxy settings in your control panel under Internet Options, Connections and LAN settings. Or you can go to your Windows Settings and choose the option for Network and Internet and Proxy. Inside of the proxy options, you can configure your proxy setup to happen automatically. Or you can specify a proxy server and the appropriate authentication for that server.
You can also define exceptions to this proxy because some applications will not work properly when communicating through a proxy connection. This allows you to specify the application that will ignore all of these proxy settings and communicate directly to the internet.
When you’re configuring network configurations and security settings inside of Windows, it will often define a network profile that will be associated with those settings. The network profile defines a very broad range of networks that you might connect to. And it defines configurations differently depending on where you’re plugging into the network. For example, if you’re at home or if you’re at work, you’re on a private network. This usually means it’s a very safe network.
There’s often a firewall that’s providing security to the rest of the internet. And it’s commonly seen if you’re connecting at home or you’re connecting at work. If you’re out at a coffee shop, you’re at a hotel, or you’re somewhere where there is an open Wi-Fi connection, then you would define that as a public network. The default configuration for a public connection means that we will not provide any file sharing.
You won’t allow any inbound connectivity to your computer. And this provides the highest level of security inside of Windows. But of course, you can customize all of these settings to provide more or less security on either of these network profiles. And you might even find additional network profiles on your computer to provide even more granular control of security.
In a previous video, we showed you how you can connect to a network share at the command line of your Windows computer, but you can do this also from the File Explorer that’s built into Windows. You simply need the name of the server and the name of the share on that server. And you can associate that with a local drive letter on your computer.
We often refer to this as mapping a drive letter in your Windows configuration. And that means that you can connect to that share. But instead of specifying the server name and the share name every time you wanted to connect to that device, you can simply refer to it as drive S, drive U, drive H, or some other drive letter. Just as you can connect to a share, you can just as easily disconnect from the chair. If you right-mouse click on any of these network shares, you have the option to disconnect from that share inside of File Explorer.
The process of mapping a drive inside of File Explorer is very easy. You can see that I have a number of drives that are already connected. But I do not have an H drive currently connected on the network. So we’d like to map a new drive letter using that letter H.
When you connect to the share, it will check your authentication. And if it doesn’t apply to that share, you’ll need to provide the correct authentication before it will connect. Depending on the version of Windows that you’re using, you can choose the option to map a network drive from the top toolbar, or click the Three Dots and choose the option to map a network drive.
This will bring up a dialog box that allows you to specify what drive letter you would like to use. It lists all of the available drive letters. And in our case, we’ll choose drive letter H. And then we can specify the folder that we’d like to connect to. In this particular case, the share name is Gate Room and it’s on server Daedalus. To be able to specify this, we use two backslashes in the name of the server. So in this case, it will be backslash backslash Daedalus and then a backslash and the name of the share. And in this case that share is called Gate Room.
Once we have that configuration set, we can finish our connection. And you’ll see that drive H now appears in our File Explorer. And of course, you can do all of this at the command line by using the net use command. You specify the name of the drive letter you’d like to use. In this case, it’s h colon. And then you would use backslash backslash Daedalus backslash Gate Room. And because there is a space in that share name, we would put quotes around that entire destination.
There may be times when you’re connected to a network where you are charged based on how much of that network you’re using. In that case, you may want to change your Windows configuration to use a metered connection. That will reduce the data usage over the network and ultimately cost you less money to use the network.
Under our Windows settings, I’m in the Network and Internet option. And I’m going to choose the option for Ethernet. Inside of that Ethernet setting is a toggle switch for Metered Connection. And by simply turning that on, we are now performing network metering. If you want to control more details around that network metering, you can click the “Set a data limit to help control data usage on this network.”
This will bring up a different screen that shows all of the usage statistics for the applications you’re currently using. And then you can click an option to enter a limit, which might be a monthly limit, a one-time limit, or an unlimited type of connection. You can specify when this limit resets and what the data limit should be for all network communication over that connection.