Small networks are normally egalitarian affairs
because no computer is in any significant sense more important than the
others. One of the ways that this digital equality manifests itself is
via the universal sharing of at least some resources on each computer.
People rarely make their entire computer available to their fellow
network users, but it’s a rare machine that doesn’t have at least a
drive or folder to share.
Setting Sharing Options
Fortunately, when it
comes to sharing resources on the network, Windows 7 comes with options
that enable you to share what resources you want to share for
controlling how others can access those resources. Network sharing in
Windows 7 begins by configuring the basic sharing options, of which
there are five in all:
File and Printer Sharing— You use this option to turn file and printer sharing on or off.
Public Folder Sharing— You use this option to turn sharing of the Public folder on or off.
Media Streaming—
You use this option to turn media sharing on or off. Note that this
sharing option is only available for Homegroup-based networks .
File-Sharing Connections—
You use this option to set the encryption level of your network
connections. By default, Windows 7 uses strong 128-bit encryption to
protect connections from network snoops. If you have network equipment
that doesn’t support this level of encryption, you can switch to a lower
level of encryption.
Password-Protected Sharing—
You use this option to turn sharing with password protection on or off.
When you turn on password-protected sharing, only people who know the
username and password of an account on your computer can access your
shared resources.
Follow these steps to set these options:
1. | Select Start, type sharing,
and then select Manage Advanced Sharing Settings in the search results.
(Alternatively, open the Network and Sharing Center and click the
Advanced Sharing Settings link.) The Advanced Sharing Settings window
appears, as shown in Figure 1.
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2. | Click the downward-pointing arrow to the right of the Home or Work profile to expand it.
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3. | Select the option you want in the File and Printer Sharing section.
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4. | Select the option you want in the Public Folder Sharing section.
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5. | To
turn on media sharing for your homegroup (if you have one), click
Choose Media Streaming Options and then click Turn On Media Streaming.
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6. | Select the option you want in the File Sharing Connections section.
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7. | Select the option you want in the Password Protected Sharing section.
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8. | Click Save Changes to put the new settings into effect.
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Creating User Accounts for Sharing
If you activated the Password Protected Sharing option (see the previous section), you have to do one of the following:
Set up separate accounts for each user that you want to access a shared resource—
Do this if you want to assign each user a different set of permissions,
or if you want the usernames and passwords to match each user’s local
username and password.
Set up a single account for all remote users to use— Do this if you want to assign the same set of permissions for all users.
Here are some notes to bear in mind for creating users who will access your computer over a network:
Windows 7 does not
allow users without passwords to access network resources. Therefore,
you must set up your network user accounts with passwords.
The
usernames you create don’t have to correspond with the names that users
have on their local machines. You’re free to set up your own usernames,
if you like.
If you
create a user account that has the same name and password as an account
of a user on his or her local machine, that user will be able to access
your shared resources directly. Otherwise, as you saw earlier ,
a Windows Security dialog box appears so that the user can enter the
username and password that you established when setting up the account
on your computer.
