Networking and Internet

Windows has APIs, components, and services that support your desktop apps' use of networking and the Internet. They provide:

• HTTP APIs.
• Network and network management.
• DNS and DHCP.
• Networking capabilities that are independent of particular network implementations.
• Remote Access Service.
• Telephony and fax.

In this section

Topic	Description
Delivery Optimization (DO)	Delivery Optimization is a is a cloud-managed, peer-to-peer client update service that delivers updates to an organization's networked devices. Delivery Optimization allows devices to download updates from alternate sources (such as other peers on the network), in addition to Microsoft servers. Delivery Optimization combines partial bits from local devices, with partial bits from Microsoft servers to update devices in the network environment. The expected result is reduced bandwidth usage, and a faster update process.
Domain Name System (DNS)	Domain Name System (DNS), a locator service in Microsoft Windows, is an industry-standard protocol that locates computers on an IP-based network.
Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP)	The Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) Application Programming Interface (API), also referred to as DHCP Client Options, enables Microsoft Windows clients to query specific options from DHCP servers. This enables vendor-specific options exposed through DHCP servers to be queried by Windows clients.
Fax Service	The fax service provides fax functionality for clients on a local area network.
Get Connected Wizard API	The Get Connected Wizard application programming interface (API) allows developers to create network, Internet and virtual private network (VPN) connections, determine whether Internet connectivity is present, and register wizard pages for capturing required user information for specific connection types.
HTTP Server API	The HTTP Server API enables applications to communicate over HTTP without using Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS).
IP Helper	The Internet Protocol Helper (IP Helper) API enables the retrieval and modification of network configuration settings for the local computer.
Management Information Base	The Management Information Base (MIB) API provides a set of structures used to contain network and network management data for a number of technologies, including Remote Access Routing Services, Internet Protocol (IP) Helper, and Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP).
Message Queuing (MSMQ)	Message Queuing (MSMQ) technology enables applications running at different times to communicate across heterogeneous networks and systems that may be temporarily offline.
Multicast Address Dynamic Client Allocation Protocol (MADCAP)	The Multicast Address Dynamic Client Allocation Protocol (MADCAP) enables applications to obtain, renew, and release multicast addresses.
Network interfaces	This topic describes high-level network interface concepts on Windows, including the ways they can be identified in code and their properties.
Network List Manager	The Network List Manager API enables applications to retrieve a list of available network connections. Applications can filter networks, based on attributes and signatures, and choose the networks best suited to their task. The Network List Manager infrastructure notifies applications of changes in the network environment, thus enabling applications to dynamically update network connections.
Network Management	The network management functions provide the ability to manage user accounts and network resources.
Network Share Management	Network share management allows applications to manage and monitor communications between Windows clients and servers using the Server Messaging Block (SMB) protocol.
Peer-to-Peer	Peer-to-peer technologies are used to facilitate real-time communication and collaboration across distributed networks.
Quality of Service (QOS)	Quality of Service (QOS), an industry-wide initiative, enables more efficient use of the network.
Remote Procedure Call (RPC)	Microsoft Remote Procedure Call (RPC) defines a powerful technology for creating distributed client/server programs. The RPC run-time stubs and libraries manage most of the processes relating to network protocols and communication. This enables you to focus on the details of the application rather than the details of the network.
Routing and Remote Access Service	Remote Access Service (RAS) can be used to create client applications. These applications display RAS common dialog boxes, manage remote access connections and devices, and manipulate phone-book entries.
Simple Network Management Protocol	The Microsoft Windows implementation of the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) is used to configure remote devices, monitor network performance, audit network usage, and detect network faults or inappropriate access.
SMB Management API	The SMB Management API provides WMI classes and methods to manage shares and share access.
Telephony Application Programming Interfaces (TAPI)	The Microsoft telephony application programming interfaces support the development of communications applications for Windows.
Teredo	Teredo is an IPv6 transition technology that provides address assignment and host-to-host automatic tunneling for unicast IPv6 traffic when IPv6/IPv4 hosts are located behind one or multiple IPv4 network address translators (NATs).
WebSocket Protocol Component API	WebSocket Protocol Component API enables asynchronous, bi-directional communication channels over HTTP that work across existing network intermediaries.
Windows Filtering Platform	Windows Filtering Platform (WFP) is a set of API and system services that provide a platform for creating network filtering applications. The WFP API allows developers to write code that interacts with the packet processing that takes place at several layers in the networking stack of the operating system. Network data can be filtered and modified before it reaches its destination.
Windows Firewall Technologies	Windows Firewall with Advanced Security and related firewall technologies enable developers to share Internet connections, protect connections using a firewall, and provide Network Address Translation (NAT).
Windows Networking (WNet)	The Windows networking (WNet) functions allow you to implement networking capabilities in your application without making allowances for a particular network provider or physical network implementation.
Windows Network Virtualization	Windows Network Virtualization enables customer virtual machine networks to decouple virtual machine networks from physical networks, provides flexibility in virtual machine provisioning, and allows customers to bring their IP addresses and topologies into cloud datacenters.
Windows RSS Platform	The Windows RSS Platform is an API that enables applications to access and manipulate the Common Feed List, a collection of Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds to which the user has subscribed.
Windows Sockets 2	Windows Sockets 2 (Winsock) enables programmers to create advanced Internet, intranet, and other network-capable applications to transmit application data across the wire, independent of the network protocol being used.
Windows Web Services API	WWSAPI is a native-code implementation of SOAP which provides core network communication functionality by supporting a set of the WS-* and .NET-* family of protocols.
WebDAV	Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning (WebDAV) is an extension to Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) that defines how basic file functions such as copy, move, delete, and create are performed by using HTTP.
Windows HTTP Services (WinHTTP)	Microsoft Windows HTTP Services (WinHTTP) provides developers with an HTTP client application programming interface (API) to send requests through the HTTP protocol to other HTTP servers.
XML HTTP Request 2	The XML HTTP Request 2 interfaces allow application to conduct HTTP request operations in multithreaded apartments (MTA) and use callbacks to receive notification of required information during response processing.
Windows Internet (WinINet)	The Microsoft Windows Internet (WinINet) application programming interface (API) enables applications to access standard Internet protocols, such as FTP and HTTP. For ease of use, WinINet abstracts these protocols into a high-level interface.

 

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