Network Attributes, Roles and Protocols

Essay by blitz70819University, Bachelor'sA+, June 2004

download word file, 5 pages 4.0

INSTALLATION AND CONFIGURATION OF SERVERS AND CLIENTS

Part A

1) Describe the attributes of a multi-user and a network operating system.

Multi-user system

        A multi-user Operating System is an operating system that has to provide support for at least two users at a time.

        The three main features of a multi-user Operating System are resource sharing, multitasking and background processing.

Resource Sharing - Sharing of the resources within the computer system. The operating system must manage the resources in such a way that all processes run some of the time and that they get the resources they need to finish their tasks.

Multi-tasking - Multi-tasking is one of the main features of a multi-user Operating System. When more than one tasks are being run at the same time the processor has to share it's time between applications, this leads to the system becoming slow.

Background Processing - When a user does not want to run a particular process at a specific time then he or she can run it in the background while running something else.

This is knows as Background Processing.

Network Operating System

        A Network Operating System is a computer Operating System that is designed primarily to support workstations, personal computers and in some instances, older terminals that are connected to LAN's

        There are 2 main types of networks; Workgroup and Domain.

        Workgroups can support up to 10 machines and have a low security arrangement. Domains on the other hand can have an unlimited number of machines and have a high security arrangement.

        In a Workgroup network, each person has to administer his or her own computer whereas on a Domain network the administration is centralised to the Domain Controller.

        In it's early forms, Windows did not support networking, so Novell Netware became the first popular network Operating...