Windows 8 : Administering Windows Networking - Troubleshooting networking (part 2) - View ing Windows 8 network settings

Viewing Windows 8 network settings

You’ve learned how to configure basic Windows 8 network settings, but how can you view the results of your work? You can use a couple of methods to view your network settings. Viewing the various network settings is one of the first troubleshooting steps you take when things go awry.

Viewing network settings by using Network and Sharing Center

To view your IP settings by using Network and Sharing Center, complete the following steps:

1. Open Network And Sharing Center.

2. Click the Change Adapter Settings link.

3. When the list of network adapters appears, right-click the appropriate adapter and, from the shortcut menu, choose Status.

   This opens a screen like the one shown at the left side of Figure 3.

Figure 3. Viewing network settings in the Network and Sharing Center

When the Status page is open for the selected network adapter, click the Details button to get the granular details about the network connection. These details are shown on the right side of Figure 3. Notice that both the IPv4 and IPv6 configuration items are displayed. The IPv6 Default Gateway and IPv6 DNS Server settings are empty because the network on which this Windows 8–based computer resides does not use IPv6.

Here’s what the information on the Status page means:

• IPv4 Connectivity You can see in Figure 3 that this computer has Internet access. If the computer were on the network but did not have Internet access, this entry would read Local. If the network adapter were not connected to a network, it would read No Network Access.

• IPv6 Connectivity This acts the same as the IPv4 Connectivity entry.

• Media State When the network adapter is operating and connected to a network, Media State reads Enabled.

• Duration The duration is a timer that indicates how long the network connection has been active. Whenever the network resets for any reason, this timer starts over.

• Speed This status reading displays the speed of the network to which this network adapter is connected. For a wired network, this is generally 10 Mbps, 100 Mbps, or 1 Gbps.

• Activity The activity graph at the bottom of the window displays the amount of traffic that has been sent and received by the selected network adapter.

Viewing network settings by using the command prompt

You don’t have to use the Network and Sharing Center to view the configuration information for your Windows 8–based computer. Windows has always supported the ability to view network settings from the command prompt, and this capability has been retained in Windows 8.

To view network settings from the command prompt, complete the following steps:

1. Open a command prompt by clicking the command prompt icon on the desktop’s taskbar or by running the command prompt app from the Start screen. You don’t need to use an administrative command prompt to view network settings.

2. At the command line, type ipconfig /all and press Enter.

   This command provides you with information such as the information you see in Figure 4.

The command results in a plethora of information about the various network adapters that are installed on the computer running Windows 8. In earlier screen shots, you saw both the Bluetooth and Ethernet adapters shown in the graphical interface. Here, you can see some additional adapters that you did not see before:

• isatap.localdomain This is a software-based network adapter that is used behind the scenes to aid in a transition from IPv4 to IPv6. In normal operations, you will almost never need to worry about this adapter.

• Teredo Tunneling Pseudo-Interface Teredo is an IPv4/IPv6 network address translation service that is also designed to help systems exist seamlessly on IPv4 and IPv6 networks. In normal operations, you should almost never have to touch this adapter’s configuration.

Figure 4. Using the command prompt to view network settings

Note

OBTAIN A SIMPLER SET OF INFORMATION FROM THE COMMAND PROMPT

The output that you saw in Figure 4 was a complete set of information that included all pertinent information about the network adapter configuration. If you’d like a simpler display that includes a little less information, run the ipconfig command without the /all parameter.

Viewing wireless network details

Previously, you learned how to view network information for a wired Ethernet connection. To view the status for a Wi-Fi adapter, complete the following steps:

1. Open Network And Sharing Center.

2. In the View Your Active Networks section of the window, tap or click the name of the wireless network to which you’re connected.

You see a screen like the one in Figure 5.

Figure 5. Status of the Wi-Fi connection

In this status dialog box, note that you are now shown the SSID of the network to which you’re connected and the current speed of the network. Unlike a wired network, your wireless network speed will fluctuate as conditions change. This is normal and expected. You’re also shown a Signal Quality indicator that can be useful in troubleshooting.