[PLUG] Win 98 ethernet

[Derek Loree]

On Tue, 2003-04-29 at 08:04, Dirk Ouellette wrote:
> When setting my Win 98 hdd for use with my Ipcop firewall box, is
> NetBIOS the windows connection type of choice?

In the interest of smooth communication between linux and other OS, I'm
going to try to answer this.  NetBIOS is not a "connection type" like
TCP/IP or IPX, it is a communication protocol, more like ftp, or http. 
The difference is that M$ uses this proprietary protocol in a way that
hides it from the user.  Without NetBIOS, winblows boxes can't share
drives and printers or access Samba servers (this can be a good thing,
btw), however, the winblows box will still be able to access web pages
and other TCP/IP services.  You're firewall box won't care if NetBIOS is
enabled, or not; though some firewalls don't block the broadcasts that
NetBIOS does during WINS elections.  

Steve Gibson at grc.com has a lot more information.

HTH,

Derek Loree