The Windows Registry

The Windows Registry

All of this TCP/IP configuration information is stored in the Windows Registry database, along with lots of other hardware and software configuration information. You can change most of the
TCP/IP parameters by using the Network applet in Control Panel as you have just seen. Certain parameters, however, such as Time to Live and the default Type of Service, can be changed only by using the Registry Editor (regedit.exe or regedit32, depending on your preference). If you change some of these Registry parameters without detailed knowledge of TCP/IP configuration, you may affect the performance of TCP/IP on your system in an adverse and unexpected way.

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If you are configuring TCP/IP on a Windows NT or 2000 device and you want to
know more, check out the Microsoft Knowledge Base article 120642 on the
Microsoft website at www.microsoft.com. This article covers all the standard,
optional, and nonconfigurable TCP/IP parameters and describes which parameters
are updated by using the Network applet in Control Panel and which are
changed using the Registry Editor. If you want to see the equivalent article for
Windows XP, check out article 314053.

In the next chapter, you’ll get a look at some of the utilities in the TCP/IP toolkit that you can use to view and troubleshoot your TCP/IP network. All of these tools are based on the original
UNIX tools, but these days they are available in one form or another for all operating systems, including all versions of UNIX, Novell NetWare, and Microsoft Windows.