Netbui question

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Ok, this is my first post seeking advice on the Network+ course.

I'm a little confused about Netbui as the inference I got on the A+ Course was that Netbui was a little used protocol as it's non-routable. However, the book I'm reading at the mo (Mike Meyer's Passport Network+) makes more of an issue of the protocol than I expected. I realise the book's a bit dated, therefore, is that the reason its mentioned a lot or is it something that the Network+ exam will expect me to be fully conversant with and ask me lots of Netbui related questions?

Also, to help my understanding of Netbui - I know its non-routable - but what would be the effect of using Netbui on a small peer to peer network where one of the computers acts as a gateway to the internet? I assume that all the computers running the Netbui protocol will talk to each other but does it mean that the only computer able to access the Internet is the gateway comp?

Hope the questions are not too silly

 

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Hi Tim.

NetBEUI is a non routeable protocol, hence it can only be used to share resources within the local network segment. because of this it appears that Microsoft are phasing it out, in preference to TCP/IP. It is however good at doing what it is designed to do and it can be faster to transfer local files than TCP/IP. It also has no configuration as such, unlike TCP/IP and all those IP addresses and subnet mask, default gateway malarkey.

For security reasons it may be preferable to use NetBEUI as the method for sharing files on your local network as Internet snoops will not be able to access your LAN. However, nowadays people seem to want Internet access from all the computers on their network, probably so they can keep them all updated with patches etc. In order to have Internet access, you would also need to bind TCP/IP to your NICs, hence the security advantage is lost.

So nowadays most pros use TCP/IP in combination with firewalls to keep intruders out and NetBEUI has lost many fans. NetBEUI uses broadcasts to establish connections on the network and I believe it is this that puts people off using it, as those broadcasts can slow things down if there are a number of hosts on the segment.

Pete

 

If you are a gaming fan, and like to play others on the LAN, then Netbeui is fast, but as mentiond, it is a non-routable protocol, so you would'nt use that protocol to do online gaming over the Internet, as routers will drop the data, as it is non-routable, fast, efficient protocol, only on LAN's not for Internetworking.