Windows 2000 Administration in a Nutshell

Netshell Commands

This group of commands is a major addition to Windows 2000 and enables command-line administration of networking services such as DHCP, DNS, Routing and Remote Access, and WINS. Netshell (netsh.exe) is a command-line scripting tool that can administer these services on local or remote computers in both interactive and batch mode. It functions by providing a shell from which you can enter different contexts for administering each service. Contexts are provided by helper DLLs, which extend Netshell’s functionality by providing service-specific command sets. Some contexts have subcontexts as well, which are described later in this section.

Netshell supports two kinds of commands:

Global commands

These can be run within any context and provide general functionality to the shell.

Context-specific commands

These are commands specific to a given context (see later in this section).

The various contexts and subcontexts that are currently supported by Netshell (more may be added later in the next version of Windows 2000) include the following:

AAAA

Configures the AAAA component that is used by both Routing and Remote Access and Internet Authentication Service

DHCP

Configures DHCP servers

Server

Subcontext for configuring a specific DHCP server

Interface

Configures demand-dial interfaces

IP

Subcontext for configuring IP demand-dial interfaces

RAS

Configures remote-access servers

IP, IPX, NETBEUI, Appletalk, AAAA

Possible subcontexts for configuring RAS

Routing

Configures IP and IPX routing ...