Administering network services

This topic provides a brief overview of networking in the UnixWare^® 7 environment. It is not intended to be a networking primer. Instead, it places the networking features in the context of a general network administration model and presents an overview of the tasks involved in the administration of user-level services.

A model of network administration

The network facilities provided in UnixWare 7 are built on the client-server model. A client is a networked machine that uses the resources of another machine on the network. A server is a system that provides resources to other systems on the network. A system can be both a client, using another system's resources, and a server, making local resources available to other systems.

Typically, the steps involved in setting up a networked machine are the following:

Making the physical connection to the network and installing any software that drives the network hardware.
Installing the network software, which packages data according to a set of protocols. The network software includes a transport provider, which manages the transfer of data across the network connection.
On the server side, setting up continuous processes, called daemons, that listen for connection requests from other network machines.
On the client side, creating an address database that contains the addresses of all machines and services on the network to which the client can connect. The client consults the database before it sends a connection request to another network machine.
Setting up security. Typically, each network application has its own mechanism for performing a minimum of authentication.

See ``Networking facilities'' for a description of the basic networking facilities and how they fit into the general model of network administration.