Holy moley! I'm so confused about protocols and what they are and how they're used and everything. Can somebody direct me to a website that explains this in a clear concise manner. I would love to understand this. I'm know quite a bit about computers but I'm venturing into new areas now. Thanks for your help!

http://www.cisco.com/univercd/cc/td/doc/cisintwk/ito_doc/index.htm --this site has quite abit about networking

TCP/IP PPP Netbui DHCP SMTP POP3 IMAP MS Client Internet Connection Sharing Terminal Services DNS IPX/SX ??????????????

Here's your list, with a bit of explanation: TCP/IP: Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol. Basically, the numbers you see in a dotted decimal format (192.168.0.1). Machines use this (in conjunciton with others) to converse with each other. This is a routable protocol. PPP: Point-To-Point Protocol. Again, used to converse with each other, but this is normally use dover dial-up lines, and is pretty much stricly used between single machines. This ties closely with SLIP (Serial Line Interface Protocol?), which allows dial-up hosts to be able to send packets over serial lines, and VPN, which creates a tunnel over open IP circuits between two machines. NetBEUI: This protocol is not routable. It uses the machine's hardware (or MAC - Media Access Control) address to communicate directly with each other. This is also the reason it's not routable. Each machine must be able to "see" the other via its address directly on the wire. DHCP: Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol. This protocol allows a DHCP server to send IP configuration entries to the client. For example: You dial-up a connection, and everything is set to DHCP. When you examine the IP information your system has, it can list your IP address, DNS domain name, gateway, subnet mask, DNS servers, and many other pieces of information. SMTP: Simple Mail Transport Protocol. This is the protocol that mail servers use (by default) to send e-mail to each other. It rides on TCP port 25. POP3: Post Office Protocol version 3. This protocol allows the user (you and me) to download e-mail to our computers. It rides on TCP port 110. POP and POP2 rides on TCP port 109. IMAP: Internet Messaging Access Protocol. This is the protocol used by many mail servers (like MS Exchange) where you leave the mail messages on the serverm and view them from there. MS Client: The primary logon a windows machine uses. This isn't a protocol. ICS: Internet Connection Sharing. Although not strictly a protocol, this allows more than one machine to share an Internet connection. It is part of Windows 98 Second Edition, and other companies also provide similar services (like WinProxy). Terminal Services: Again, not a protocol, but this allows a client machine to run programs on a server and make it look like the program is running on the local system. This can be handy for environments where licenses are limited, and must be stricly controlled. DNS: Domain Name Services. This protocol uses TCP/UDP port 53. What this does is transform the human-understandable names like "www.computing.net" to an IP address (216.122.146.149) that machines can use to communicate. The only reason this protocol exists is because we can't remember the numbers, but the letters and names we can. IPX/SPX: Internet Packet eXchange/Sequenced Packet eXchange. This is a routable protocol and was devised by Novell to make their servers communicate with each other. On a local network, the gaming industry took it up and used it extensively for multi-user games because it's rubost, requires virtually no configuration, and works almost every time. There are many, many more protocols, but that should be enough to get you started. Cheers! Chase

You must have taken quite a while to do this. Thank you very much! Much more of this is clear now.

Not really. Only about 3 or 4 minutes. It's all off the top of my head. That's what comes from working in the field for the past 19 years. Cheers! Chase