You should have a basic understanding of how to navigate round a Windows operating system, including how you navigate to the control panel of your particular system, and also how to open Command Prompt.

While the majority of the activities in this book can be carried out on your standard operating system, it is recommended that you install a version of your operating system on a virtual machine. This will ensure that any changes you may make do not impact your normal system.

Some examples utilize a Windows Server operating system. If you would like to attempt those examples yourself, you can do so by downloading an evaluation copy of the operating system from Microsoft's Evaluation Center: https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/evalcenter/.

Undertake all of the end-of-chapter quizzes, and address any wrong answers before moving on to the next chapter. It is important that you know why something is the answer, rather than just knowing that it is the answer.

Read Chapter 11, Understanding IPv4, and then re-read it. This is arguably the one topic everyone struggles with. Make sure you understand it before moving on.

We also provide a PDF file that has color images of the screenshots/diagrams used in this book. You can download it here: https://static.packt-cdn.com/downloads/9781838643508_ColorImages.pdf.

There are a number of text conventions used throughout this book.

CodeInText: Indicates code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles. Here is an example: "In Command Prompt, type hostname and press the Enter key."

Bold: Indicates a new term, an important word, or words that you see on screen. For example, words in menus or dialog boxes appear in the text like this. Here is an example: "Select Properties from the context menu."