Viewing Windows 8 network settings
You’ve learned how to configure basic Windows 8 network settings,
but how can you view the results of your work? You can use a couple of
methods to view your network settings. Viewing the various network
settings is one of the first troubleshooting steps you take when things go awry.
Viewing network settings by using Network and Sharing Center
To view your IP settings by using Network and Sharing Center, complete the following steps:
-
Open Network And Sharing Center.
-
Click the Change Adapter Settings link.
-
When the list of network adapters appears, right-click the appropriate adapter and, from the shortcut menu, choose Status.
This opens a screen like the one shown at the left side of Figure 3.
When the Status page is open for the selected network adapter, click
the Details button to get the granular details about the network
connection. These details are shown on the right side of Figure 3.
Notice that both the IPv4 and IPv6 configuration items are displayed.
The IPv6 Default Gateway and IPv6 DNS Server settings are empty because
the network on which this Windows 8–based computer resides does not use
IPv6.
Here’s what the information on the Status page means:
-
IPv4 Connectivity You can see in Figure 3
that this computer has Internet access. If the computer were on the
network but did not have Internet access, this entry would read Local.
If the network adapter were not connected to a network, it would read No Network Access.
-
IPv6 Connectivity This acts the same as the IPv4 Connectivity entry.
-
Media State When the network adapter is operating and connected to a network, Media State reads Enabled.
-
Duration The
duration is a timer that indicates how long the network connection has
been active. Whenever the network resets for any reason, this timer
starts over.
-
Speed This status
reading displays the speed of the network to which this network adapter
is connected. For a wired network, this is generally 10 Mbps, 100 Mbps,
or 1 Gbps.
-
Activity The
activity graph at the bottom of the window displays the amount of
traffic that has been sent and received by the selected network adapter.
Viewing network settings by using the command prompt
You don’t have to use the Network and Sharing Center to view the
configuration information for your Windows 8–based computer. Windows
has always supported the ability to view network settings from the
command prompt, and this capability has been retained in Windows 8.
To view network settings from the command prompt, complete the following steps:
-
Open a command prompt by clicking the command prompt icon on the
desktop’s taskbar or by running the command prompt app from the Start
screen. You don’t need to use an administrative command prompt to view
network settings.
-
At the command line, type ipconfig /all
and press Enter.
This command provides you with information such as the information you see in Figure 4.
The command results in a plethora of information about the various
network adapters that are installed on the computer running Windows 8.
In earlier screen shots, you saw both the Bluetooth and Ethernet
adapters shown in the graphical interface. Here, you can see some
additional adapters that you did not see before:
-
isatap.localdomain
This is a
software-based network adapter that is used behind the scenes to aid in
a transition from IPv4 to IPv6. In normal operations, you will almost
never need to worry about this adapter.
-
Teredo Tunneling Pseudo-Interface
Teredo is an
IPv4/IPv6 network address translation service that is also designed to
help systems exist seamlessly on IPv4 and IPv6 networks. In normal
operations, you should almost never have to touch this adapter’s
configuration.
Note
OBTAIN A SIMPLER SET OF INFORMATION FROM THE COMMAND PROMPT
The output that you saw in Figure 4
was a complete set of information that included all pertinent
information about the network adapter configuration. If you’d like a
simpler display that includes a little less information, run the ipconfig command without the /all parameter.
Viewing wireless network details
Previously, you learned how to view network information for a wired
Ethernet connection. To view the status for a Wi-Fi adapter, complete
the following steps:
-
Open Network And Sharing Center.
-
In the View Your Active Networks section of the window, tap or click the name of the wireless network to which you’re connected.
You see a screen like the one in Figure 5.
In this status dialog box, note that you are now shown the SSID of the network to which you’re connected and the current speed of the network.
Unlike a wired network, your wireless network speed will fluctuate as
conditions change. This is normal and expected. You’re also shown a
Signal Quality indicator that can be useful in troubleshooting.