Networking i Windows 8

This might be a long post. So ill try to split it up where I think it should.
The post will cover whats new in networking in windows 8 including Hyper-V.
Also how you can manage your network via powershell.

In Windows 8 Server, you can manage (mostly)everything from Powershell.
In previous versions of Windows you could manage most of the networking configuration in the command netsh

So when you try to use a command in netsh command interface you get this message.
So Microsoft has moved the functionality out of netsh and into regular cmdlets.

And first its not easy to find the cmdlets that are used to change the for instance “ip adress for an interface” so I had to use the get-command and take a look trough the list, and voila!
You have some modules that you need to take a look at.
First the NetTCPIP module.
This is the module you can use such as to alter IP adressing (IPv4 & IPv6) show and alter TCP connections.

Second is the netadapter module, here you can alter for instance driver settings for the spesific interface. For instance you can use the Get-networkadapteradvancedproperty and you can see if flow control is enabled, or jumbo packet is enabled. You can alter those settings with the set-networkadapteradvancedproperty (phuh! long command)

Third it the netsecurity module here you can alter the firewall settings. Create IPsec rules and such.

Fourth is the netlbfo module  from here you can create load-balancing and failover NICs. Before you had have a vendor software for instance (broadcom) installed and create nic teams from there. But now Microsoft has implemented this in the Operating system.

And of course there are other modules regarding to Hyper-v QoS and virtual switching but ill get to that later. You can use the command get-command -module net* so see all the commands regarding networking.

Now for the quick walktrough of some useful commands. I will create a Nic team with failover and disable firewall for the new team and add an ip adress of 10.0.0.1 and see how it works.

Now that you can see here I have two interfaces. Remember NIC teams can only be formed between homogenous NICs. So two 1GB NICs can be teamed, or two 10GB NICs can be teamed, but you cannot team a 1GB and 10GB NIC, so for this purpose I have 2 virtual indentical NICs

If the individual NIC members each support Receive Side Scaling (RSS), the NIC team also supports RSS. Hence it is a good idea to team NICs that support RSS. The resulting NIC team is also highly capable and does not lose any functionality.

I run the command new-netlbfoteam and enter the parameteres. and presto I have a teamed interface and I should now have a new interface named “TEAM – 1” which I should be able to alter the IP adress for.

I type the command GET-netipadress -interfacealias “TEAM1 – default” and I see my adresses for IPv4 and IPv6 and I need to change that. So I set the ip to 10.0.0.1 with a subnet prefix of /24 (255.255.255.0)

Got an error message, but when I check my interface I have the correct IP. Since it now appears as a regular interface I can see its advanced adapter settings, fancy?

And last but not least disabling the firewall (for the domain profile)


Stay tuned for part two of this blog.

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