A network operating system is a program that is executed on the server machine and also able to take care of the others, facts and figures, security, groups, applications and other networking operations. This paper will look cover the evolution and the extent in which network operating systems that are used in computer networks today. With the growing need to have a networked environment in the workplace today, there has also been the need to have computer networks and thus the growth and popularity of operating systems that will manage these networks. There are various network operating systems that have been developed. This paper will assess the various network operating systems and compare their features. There are network operating systems from various companies. The most common network operating systems include Windows, Linux, Mac, and UNIX (Hunter, 2005). Windows network operating systems are known to have security lapses in their models. Compared to other network operating systems, they lag behind in security. The Windows NT is a group of operating systems that belong to the Microsoft; its initial version came into operation in 1993. It has the ability to be used by between 100 and 500 users and can also perform the processing of many tasks at ago.
There are two major components of Microsoft Operating systems: User mode and the Kernel Mode. The user mode consists of subsystems which are able to move the requests of the inputs and the outputs to the desired kernel mode program drivers by the use of the input and output manager.
There is also Windows 2003 server. The features of the Windows 2003 operating system include rising improvements, provision of a temporary system to bring back those files that had previously been lost, a lot of security unlike the other versions before it that is due to the presence of a security system of firewalls and the fact that most tasks are disabled the moment they get enabled. There are also great additions to the active directory like disabling the classes from the schema (Hunter, 2005).
Windows 2008 server is also another network operating system from Windows. Due to the increase in challenging business needs and higher operational demands along with the demanding security and compliance, there was the design of the windows 2008. This operating system was designed to assist in the expansion of control, availability and the flexibility of data center and the desktop infrastructure and on the other hand submerge the costs (Hunter, 2005).
UNIX consists of an overall control system called the master control program which has various utilities, known as the Kernel. This allows for the beginning and terminations of system programs, planning of the systems view in order to prevent problems when trying to access the files in the system at the same time.
The Mac OS X Server on the other hand is a type of network operating system that emanated from the UNIX system the difference being that with the Mac OS X server operating system, it includes a work group of management and administrative program tools which give an access to crucial tasks of the network which is not difficult. It also encompasses many incremented tasks and tools that help in controlling them which include software servers as the chat servers, web servers, wiki servers, the calendar servers and other various servers.
References
Hunter, P. (2005. Network operating systems. London: Pearson Prentice Hall.
Hunter, P. (2005). Network operating systems: Making the right choices. New York: Addison-Wesley.
