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What's the "Web Client Network"?

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I had a customer ask me this today, so in case others are wondering: What's the “Web Client Network”?

If you open Windows Explorer, click Network Neighborhood, then click Entire Network, you'll see an icon for Web Client Network. The customer saw nothing under this icon, so was wondering why it was there in the UI.

The short answer is that icon is present to display any WebDAV connections that your machine has. As many machines don't make WebDAV connections, that's why there was nothing under the icon for this particular customer.

The long answer: Windows clients can access files on other machines using a variety of network protocols. Each installed network protocol that the client supports gets an icon under Entire Network in My Network Places. The native protocol that Windows clients and Windows servers support is known as SMB. (A version of the SMB protocol was publicly licensed and is called CIFS.) If you expand Microsoft Windows Network under Entire Network, you will see computers that you can connect to using the SMB protocol.

Starting with Windows XP, Windows clients can also connect to machines using the WebDAV protocol. This is a file sharing protocol supported by some web servers, such as https://www.msnusers.com. If you have any active WebDAV connections, you will see them listed in Web Client Network.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    February 20, 2004
    So, any idea why on my little home network, the XPPro laptop is only seeing my main PC via the Web Client Network? - What do I do?

  • Anonymous
    February 24, 2004
    It's hard to say what the problem could be. First, is only your XP Pro laptop seeing this problem -- can other machines on your network access files from your main PC? Second, does your main PC share files using the WebDAV protocol? How did you start file sharing from your main PC? (What operating system is your main PC running, anyway?)

    What other symptoms of a problem do you have? Are you able to access your files?

    Good luck diagnosing this,

    --Brian

  • Anonymous
    January 21, 2009
    PingBack from http://www.hilpers.it/173095-web-client-network-collegamento-sospetto

  • Anonymous
    May 29, 2009
    PingBack from http://paidsurveyshub.info/story.php?title=file-it-what-s-the-web-client-network