When will Microsoft end support for your version of Windows

 Windows Server upgrades are never simple. There are lots of connections and dependencies, and everything needs to be handled correctly to avoid introducing problems that turn an upgrade into a nightmare. With upcoming Windows end of life dates in mind, let’s take a look at one of the services you need to upgrade: DHCP.

DHCP Defined
DHCP stands for Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol. All devices on a network need an IP address to access the network and services; DHCP makes managing those addresses automatic. This eliminates manual effort that would be required to assign address, modify them when a device is moved to another subnet, and reclaim them when devices are removed. Along with eliminating the manual work, DHCP eliminates the inevitable configuration errors when addresses are managed manually, such as two computers being assigned the same address.

Using DHCP requires a server that owns the pool of addresses and assigns (“leases”) an address to clients on the network.

Upcoming Windows Server End of Life Dates
Understanding how to upgrade DHCP is particularly important if you’re running Windows 2008 or Windows 2007; the end of support date for both is January 2020. That means Microsoft will no longer provide security updates for that version after that date, so not upgrading exposes you to ongoing, increasing security risks.

Which version should you use?
Although extended support for Windows 10 is available until late 2025, mainstream support ends late 2020, so it’s worth beginning to think about upgrading that version now, rather than making it your new target. Similarly, Windows Server 2012 is already in extended support, so it’s not a good choice for your new version. 

read more : windows 7 hash

Redistribution Role in Networking

 The Quick Definition: Route redistribution is a process that allows a network to use a routing protocol to dynamically route traffic based on information learned from a different routing protocol. Route redistribution helps increase accessibility within networks.

What is Routing?

Routing consists of more than sending packets from one network location to another. The routing process also includes learning routes and determining the most efficient ways to handle network traffic.

Routers are configured in several ways that enable them to learn a route. The simplest method is to manually configure static routes. A static route tells the router exactly where to send packets. For example,  a static route tells Router 1 to route packets to Router 2, and then Router 2 is manually configured to send packets to Router 3.

The issue with static routes is that many routes change configurations — and the patch from one router to another often changes as a network grows. You can have thousands of different routes, and if one changes, you could be left manually configuring several routers. This can be a time-consuming process, especially when it comes to larger networks.

windows 7 lanmanserver

Testing Your Network Connection

 It's often useful to test the speed of your local area network to ensure you're getting the amount of bandwidth that you need for various tasks. A LAN speed test can be useful in conjunction with an internet throughput test measuring how fast you can upload and download content from the internet at large or on its own to see how fast you can transfer files and data on your local network. You can find a variety of free apps to test the speed on your LAN.

Internet and LAN Speed Test

A local area network is a set of computers and other devices like smart phones and printers connected within a relatively small space, such as an office, a university or a home. A LAN can include devices connected wirelessly, ones connected by wired connections or a mix of the two.

Today, many LANs are also connected to the internet, and some are primarily set up simply to send local traffic to the world at large. But it's often also useful to send data between computers on a LAN, whether you're connecting to a network-enabled monitor for a presentation, storing files on a local server or sending print jobs to a printer on your network.

find more : lan management

How to Contribute to Open Source Project

 It was much easier for IT managers back in the days when proprietary software was the only game in town: After figuring out what software would do the job best, all that was necessary was to license and install. Support might be included in the license or it might be extra, but either way it'd most likely be coming from the same source as the license, whether that be directly from the company developing the software or from a licensed partner.

Aside from compliance issues, with each major vendor having the contractual right to show up in the data center to perform an audit to make sure that all running instances were fully paid and in accordance with the contract, it was pretty much an uncomplicated arrangement: Pay to license the software, pay again for the support and put the software into service.

While most data centers are still licensing at least some proprietary software, much of what's running in modern data centers is open source. On one hand, the IT manager’s job is easier if it includes balancing a budget: money no longer needs to be spent on software or operating system licenses. Compliance audits are also all but nonexistent.

find more : ms lan manager

3 Strategies for Better Open Source Support

 It was much easier for IT managers back in the days when proprietary software was the only game in town: After figuring out what software would do the job best, all that was necessary was to license and install. Support might be included in the license or it might be extra, but either way it'd most likely be coming from the same source as the license, whether that be directly from the company developing the software or from a licensed partner.

Aside from compliance issues, with each major vendor having the contractual right to show up in the data center to perform an audit to make sure that all running instances were fully paid and in accordance with the contract, it was pretty much an uncomplicated arrangement: Pay to license the software, pay again for the support and put the software into service.

While most data centers are still licensing at least some proprietary software, much of what's running in modern data centers is open source. On one hand, the IT manager’s job is easier if it includes balancing a budget: money no longer needs to be spent on software or operating system licenses. Compliance audits are also all but nonexistent.

find more : ms lan manager

What is the process of Routing?

 The Quick Definition: Route redistribution is a process that allows a network to use a routing protocol to dynamically route traffic based on information learned from a different routing protocol. Route redistribution helps increase accessibility within networks.

What is Routing?

Routing consists of more than sending packets from one network location to another. The routing process also includes learning routes and determining the most efficient ways to handle network traffic.

Routers are configured in several ways that enable them to learn a route. The simplest method is to manually configure static routes. A static route tells the router exactly where to send packets. For example,  a static route tells Router 1 to route packets to Router 2, and then Router 2 is manually configured to send packets to Router 3.

The issue with static routes is that many routes change configurations — and the patch from one router to another often changes as a network grows. You can have thousands of different routes, and if one changes, you could be left manually configuring several routers. This can be a time-consuming process, especially when it comes to larger networks.

windows 7 lanmanserver

software for monitoring your Local Area Network

 some tools are best fit purely for troubleshooting, but in the case of monitoring your LAN, a little bit of awareness can go a long way towards preventing problems before they happen.

There's a variety of software for monitoring your Local Area Network, both in terms of the devices attached to it as well as the traffic traversing it!

It's invaluable when trouble stirs to quickly discover the root of the cause, but there's more to it than just that – software with predictive alerts and monitoring can help you spend less time actively monitoring and more time focusing on other technical problems without sacrificing precious up-time

On a broad scale, LAN Monitoring software is great for keeping track of all the physical aspects of your network – the various devices connected to it, the servers that rely on it, the routing equipment that makes it function, and the systems that utilize it all.

Knowing a machine or server suddenly dropped offline as soon as, or even having it predicted slightly before, it happens is invaluable.

The happiest users are those who almost never realize anything is wrong because you're using the right software to predict and prevent problems as much as possible.

Also find : lan management

Why Do Not Store LAN Manager Hash Value

  MaxCmds actually serves the same purpose as the MaxMpxCt on the Fileserver. Not surprisingly these two parameters have a special relationship. It’s like this: whenever an SMB session is setup (i.e. a shared file is accessed), the SMB session is negotiated. During this negotiation the Fileserver passes down the value of MaxMpxCt to the client (a Terminal server for example). The client then compares this value to his own MaxCmds value. The lower of the two values then is used to set a maximum on the number of outstanding client requests to the File server.

Possible values: 1-65535

MaxThreads
The MaxThreads specifies how many threads are allowed to run at once. (Each thread allows one outstanding operation.) By increasing this you can increase the amount of simultaneous work. Each extra execution thread will take 1 Kbyte of additional NonPaged pool memory.

Possible values: 1-255

MaxCollectionCount
Specifies the amount of data that must be present in the buffer of the redirector to trigger a write operation. If the amount of data in the buffer meets or exceeds this value, then it is written immediately. Otherwise, it is retained in the buffer until either more data is added or the value of the CollectionTime entry expires.

Possible values: 1-65535

Monitoring
Problems stemming from poor fileserving performance can sometimes be a bit tricky to pinpoint. One way to make sure is by using good ol’ perfmon. The problem with interpreting perfmon counters is that you can never know what the "right" value is unless you have baselined your environment properly. So what to monitor and how to interpret those values is entirely up to you. However, there are some counters you can monitor that I can give some basic tips on. Configure perfmon to monitor the following counters:

Physical Disk
You can measure this on the Terminal Server as well, but you should start at the file server. If the queue length is more than one for a sustained period of time, then your disks are hyperventilating. Give them some air: up your I/O throughput. Look on the software-side: are you paging a lot? (that'll kill your I/O throughput right there) or is your system disk heavily fragmented? Or on the hardware side: buy faster disks (15K SCSI) or upgrade your RAID controller.

know more : ms lan manager

Why Authentication is needful for Networking

 If a client provides a LANMAN and an NTLM hash, only the NTLM hash is used unless the QZLSPWDANY$ share exists (or NetServer is configured to allow LANMAN authentication). This is because the NTLM hash is more secure. If only a LANMAN hash is provided (as was done by Windows 9x), that hash is used. NetServer does not support LMv2 hashes; therefore, LMV2 always fails. NTLM and NTLMv2 hashes are always accepted (with the restrictions in the table above) unless NetServer is configured for Kerberos-only authentication.

The QPWDLVL of the system does not affect the hashes that NetServer can accept. The thing that it does do is make the NTLM style hashes work with mixed-case Windows passwords. This is possible with QPWDLVL 2 and 3 because the system password can be mixed-case.

NetServer does not indicate to Windows to send a specific type of encryption. The only thing the server tells the client during the Negotiate is if extended security is supported by the server. The client will then try to negotiate whether to use Kerberos or password hashes. At no point does NetServer tell the client what form of password hash to use nor is there any way that NetServer could tell the client what form to use.

Also find : ms lan manager

How Rainbow cracking technology working

 Gone are the days when we have to wait for the days together to recover the Windows account password. Thanks to the rainbow crack technology, now we can crack the passwords in few seconds with 100% success rate.

This Rainbow cracking technology works on simple concept. Instead of computing the hashes for each password dynamically and comparing with the correct one during cracking, password hashes are computed in advance for all character sets. These hashes are then stored in datasets called rainbow tables.

So cracking involves just comparing the current password hash with the pre computed hashes within the rainbow tables and get the associated plain text password. Hence it takes very less time compared to the traditional method of brute force cracking. Setting up the rainbow table for various character sets is just one time activity and may take days or months based on the character set and speed of the machine. Once the rainbow tables are ready, you can feed the password hash to it and get your password cracked in seconds.

In order to recover your Windows user password, first you have to get the LM hash for the target user account. This can be done in many ways. You can use any of the tools such as pwdump, cain&abel or LC5. You need to have administrator privileges to dump the hashes using these tools. If you have lost administrator password itself, then you can boot the system using BackTrack live cd or Windows restore CD and then copy the SAM & SYSTEM hive files (which is located in c:\windows\system32\config folder. Note that your system drive may be different). Next feed these files to Cain & Abel tool to get the LM hashes for the target account.

Read more : lm password cracker

Authentication in Networking

 If a client provides a LANMAN and an NTLM hash, only the NTLM hash is used unless the QZLSPWDANY$ share exists (or NetServer is configured to allow LANMAN authentication). This is because the NTLM hash is more secure. If only a LANMAN hash is provided (as was done by Windows 9x), that hash is used. NetServer does not support LMv2 hashes; therefore, LMV2 always fails. NTLM and NTLMv2 hashes are always accepted (with the restrictions in the table above) unless NetServer is configured for Kerberos-only authentication.

The QPWDLVL of the system does not affect the hashes that NetServer can accept. The thing that it does do is make the NTLM style hashes work with mixed-case Windows passwords. This is possible with QPWDLVL 2 and 3 because the system password can be mixed-case.

NetServer does not indicate to Windows to send a specific type of encryption. The only thing the server tells the client during the Negotiate is if extended security is supported by the server. The client will then try to negotiate whether to use Kerberos or password hashes. At no point does NetServer tell the client what form of password hash to use nor is there any way that NetServer could tell the client what form to use.

Also find : ms lan manager

What is Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol

 Windows Server upgrades are never simple. There are lots of connections and dependencies, and everything needs to be handled correctly to avoid introducing problems that turn an upgrade into a nightmare. With upcoming Windows end of life dates in mind, let’s take a look at one of the services you need to upgrade: DHCP.

DHCP Defined
DHCP stands for Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol. All devices on a network need an IP address to access the network and services; DHCP makes managing those addresses automatic. This eliminates manual effort that would be required to assign address, modify them when a device is moved to another subnet, and reclaim them when devices are removed. Along with eliminating the manual work, DHCP eliminates the inevitable configuration errors when addresses are managed manually, such as two computers being assigned the same address.

Using DHCP requires a server that owns the pool of addresses and assigns (“leases”) an address to clients on the network.

Upcoming Windows Server End of Life Dates
Understanding how to upgrade DHCP is particularly important if you’re running Windows 2008 or Windows 2007; the end of support date for both is January 2020. That means Microsoft will no longer provide security updates for that version after that date, so not upgrading exposes you to ongoing, increasing security risks.

Which version should you use?
Although extended support for Windows 10 is available until late 2025, mainstream support ends late 2020, so it’s worth beginning to think about upgrading that version now, rather than making it your new target. Similarly, Windows Server 2012 is already in extended support, so it’s not a good choice for your new version. 
read more : windows 7 hash

How many ways Routers are configured

  The Quick Definition: Route redistribution is a process that allows a network to use a routing protocol to dynamically route traffic based on information learned from a different routing protocol. Route redistribution helps increase accessibility within networks.

What is Routing?

Routing consists of more than sending packets from one network location to another. The routing process also includes learning routes and determining the most efficient ways to handle network traffic.

Routers are configured in several ways that enable them to learn a route. The simplest method is to manually configure static routes. A static route tells the router exactly where to send packets. For example,  a static route tells Router 1 to route packets to Router 2, and then Router 2 is manually configured to send packets to Router 3.

The issue with static routes is that many routes change configurations — and the patch from one router to another often changes as a network grows. You can have thousands of different routes, and if one changes, you could be left manually configuring several routers. This can be a time-consuming process, especially when it comes to larger networks.

windows 7 lanmanserver