Networking and sharing details at a glance.
Windows Vista improves the wireless network experience for home, mobile, and business PCs in a number of ways. The new Network Awareness feature keeps your programs optimized for the network's changing capabilities. Your data is also more secure: Windows Vista offers enhanced support for the latest wireless security protocols, including WPA2. Windows Vista helps you avoid connecting to fraudulent wireless networks that seem like legitimate hotspots but, in fact, are not. Windows Vista also provides an easy way to create ad-hoc (PC-to-PC) wireless networks for use with peer-to-peer activities such as file sharing and collaborative programs such as Windows Meeting Space.
You can create ad-hoc (PC-to-PC) wireless networks using a simple wizard. When the wizard presents a list of available networks, Windows Vista clearly marks any wireless networks that are not secure.
The Network and Sharing Center in Windows Vista puts you in control of your network. The Network and Sharing Center can check your connection status, show you a visual representation of your network, and troubleshoot any connection problems.
In addition, Windows Vista examines the capabilities of your computer's wireless interface card and chooses the highest security available for that card when connecting to a wireless network.
Windows Vista now actively probes for fewer networks than earlier versions of Windows—and it probes only when you tell it to. In addition, your PC will automatically connect only to networks that you've explicitly requested or identified as preferred networks, and it warns you if you're about to connect to an unsecured network.
For more about home networking, see Networking.
Windows Mobility Center puts the most frequently used mobile PC settings, including those for wireless networking, in a single location: Windows Mobility Center. No more hunting through the Control Panel or icons in the notification area to find what you need. All of the important mobile settings are right in the Windows Mobility Center.
Connectivity and other mobile settings.
The Connect to a Network Projector Wizard helps you connect to any Windows-compatible network projector over a wireless or wired network. A network projector is a shared resource that you can access from your mobile PC—much like a printer on a network. When the wizard displays available projectors, an icon appears next to each projector to indicate whether it's secure or unsecure. The wizard will automatically optimize your presentation settings for network performance.
You can also use this feature in Windows Meeting Space, which enables you to stream content to a projector and to a Windows Meeting Space session simultaneously.
Wireless networks are increasingly common in the network infrastructures of many companies and organizations. Beyond the office, roaming users frequently find themselves trying to connect to the Internet or to the corporate network via wireless networks at hotels, conference centers, and airports. It's imperative that IT staff or other decision-makers choose security tools that help protect data without imposing undue strain on users and administrators.
Windows Vista Ultimate includes a native wireless networking architecture called Native WiFi as part of its core networking stack. Among other things, the architecture fosters flexible PC deployment across many brands and models, consistent user experiences regardless of user hardware, and more reliable drivers for third-party wireless network interface cards (NICs). When you create a wireless network, Windows Vista defaults to the most secure options supported by an NIC.
An issue common to wireless networking is the difficulty of managing configuration options on multiple PCs. Organizations must maintain a consistent configuration across various desktop environments to help ensure greater supportability, lower administrative costs, and increased user productivity.
Wireless networking improvements in Windows Vista include:
Better methods for discovering, creating, and connecting to wireless networks through the Network and Sharing Center.
Wireless Single Sign-On to help ensure that a wireless network is available before the user authenticates to an Active Directory domain.
Support for the latest security protocols from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 802.11 standards body, including Wi-Fi Protected Access 2 (WPA2).
Mitigation of common attacks on wireless networks.
Heightened manageability through Group Policy objects (GPOs) for wireless networking and command lines for configuration and troubleshooting.
New diagnostic tools to aid in troubleshooting and repair of wireless connectivity problems.
In Windows Vista, wireless networks are logically equivalent to their wired-network counterparts and can be managed in much the same way. New Group Policy settings enable administrators to configure policies for wireless PC behavior. In addition, the command-line interface in Windows Vista enables full management of wireless networks from a command prompt.
Using the Group Policy snap-in for the Microsoft Management Console (MMC), administrators can define how wireless clients connect to and operate on wireless networks. For example, a company can define a policy that limits all wireless connections to a certain protocol, a certain wireless network, or only secured networks. Group Policy can prevent users from changing these settings.
Windows Vista includes an enhanced network command-line interface called Netsh that enables automation and scripting and helps troubleshoot wireless network connections. Using this command-line interface, administrators can verify, change, or remove a PC's wireless network configuration profiles. These profiles can be exported to or imported from other computers to expedite the provisioning of multiple computers.
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