LettersReaders Speak Out

Strong and Weak Hosts

The September 2007 The Cable Guy column (technetmagazine.com/issues/ 2007/09/CableGuy), "Strong and Weak Host Models," mentioned the ability to enable or disable the use of the weak host, but it did not specify how to do so. Is this merely enabling or disabling the firewall or setting a registry of parameter? Is there a registry parameter associated with this?

Also, local access configuration requires two pieces of information: the IP address and the IP mask. Why does Microsoft consider a configuration that does not contain the optional gateway parameter as invalid?

—Milt B.

You can configure strong or weak host behavior in Windows Vista® and Windows Server® 2008 with the commands listed in the figure (first published in the September 2007 issue). There are no corresponding registry entries. You can't configure strong or weak host behavior in Windows® XP and Windows Server 2003. IPv4 is weak host only; IPv6 is strong host only.

As for your second question, to our knowledge, IPv4 or IPv6 configuration on an interface does not require the configuration of a default gateway or router, either through the user interface or at the command line.

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