mike27oct: No, I wasn’t specifically asking you. I was asking anyone who uses that phrase or anyone who thinks they know what those using that prase mean by it. It seems to appear in threads in this forum from time to time, but it is not a valid technical term.
I also took it to mean router password, and obviously a lot of people do - redadare did. Google also thinks that the term “network password” is a valid term. There are 1.2 million results for that term.
ronmaz wrote:
I also took it to mean router password, and obviously a lot of people do - redadare did. Google also thinks that the term “network password” is a valid term. There are 1.2 million results for that term.
I searched for the term to see if it had a clear technical meaning (well defined). Could not find one. A password that controls access to a router (to allow the router to be configured) is not a “network password,” as it does not control access to “the network” at all. The term makes some sense when used to mean “Wifi passord,” but saying that isn’t any harder than the less clear “network password.”
It appears Microsoft use it in various prompts as in ‘enter network password’. Google “enter network password” with quotes and you may make some sense of it. You can also see all the boxes that ask for this info by using the same term with google images.
If Microsoft (and others) use it, for whatever reason, then I assume that it is ‘valid’.
Its likely that most people misuse the term but as a ‘layman’ if I don’t understand something I usually ask for more information.
How come that a CS prof. has never used windows?
Guess I am being to pedantic, but hey, I am a professor. I simply meant the term “network password” does not have a universally accepted meaning in CS/IT. The fact that MS uses a term in a certain way does not make it “the definition” of the term. Heck, my university’s IT uses “network id/password” too. Its use isn’t uncommon (as the google hits show). But the meaning can vary. I was asking because I was not at all clear on what redadare had meant when he was using the term, and I was surprised that he had been confused about what credentials to use with the WD TV unit.
As for using WIndows, well of course I have had to use Windows at times, but contrary to what home users believe, WIndows is not remotely the entire computer field (and increasingly less important), and when MS makes up terms, these terms do not become accepted CS terminology (though it is reasonable to assume many users on here will use MS terms).
OK, since the router hardware and OS create the “network” , and to get into the router and configure it to affect the network, we need a user name and password, to do it. So, calling them either a router name/password, or a network name/password is synonymous to me.
Assignment for Prof Carver: On Monday, ask your students: “If I asked you to enter your network user name and password” what do I mean by that?" Please report their responses back to us! 
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OK guys, I’m done with splitting hairs, so have a nice weekend. I’m going to a baseball game!
Hello guys and girls, I’ll try to be as short as possible:
I’ve been using the WD TV live to stream movies from my Windows 7 pc for something like 6 months now by simple Sharing a folder from my pc and then choosing “Windows Shares > PC Name” in WD TV. It had worked right away from the first 5 mins, no hassle, no problems, I was really surprised how easy that was. Well, I guess now it’s payback time.
So I got a new Windows 8 pc and thought hey, let’s just do the same thing like I had done before. Right-click the movies folder and share. I open WD, Windows Shares, but eh, only the old Win7 pc shows up…
So far I have done the following to find out where the “blocking” takes place:
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Tried to access my Win8’s shared folder from my Win7 pc > Success
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Turned off password sharing and using a local win account > OK
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At “Choose media streaming options for computers and devices” of Network and sharing center, WDTV LIVE shows up and it’s checked as “Allow”!
Still, when I enter “Windows Shares”, I only see my old pc, and if that is turned off, TV Live keeps searching (arrow turns in circles) like forever. It doesn’t really give a negative answer as if there is nothing to show but it keeps searching…
Any ideas that I can try before I put it on sale? Currently I’ve gone back to playing movies from my usb flash and it **bleep**!
PS. I tried setting up a Media Server Library from Windows Media Player although I don’t use WMP at all and then, TV Live recognized the media and played a few by selecting “media server” option. Problem is this WMP thing is not updating as it should. New movies don’t even show up in th WMP’s library, let alone TV Live so I completely resigned from that solution. I would like my good old “Windows Shares”. All was so easy and simple there.
A device reset or at the very least a device restart may help. (thats not just turning it off and on again)
Go into setup-system and select the device restart, or the device reset. Note that the device reset option will return the unit to its initial factory settings.
Is the network name the same on both the WDTV Live and the PC? It needs to be.
Hi and thanks. I forgot to say I had already tried that a few minutes before I posted as a last effort. But it keeps searching for computers until it hangs and becomes unresponsive (doesn’t even turn off).
Regarding the name I think it is the default in both the pc and the WD TV and it’s “WORKGROUP” if you talk about the sharing network’s name. Both the pc and the WDTV are connected by ethernet to the router.
hmmm, on wdtv try setup-network settings-clear login info for network share
Yes, I’ve already tried that with no success… Really can’t figure out why this happens. Maybe somthing about Windows 8 Firewall??
You seem to have a Win 8 specific problem. I suggest you copy your first post in here and repost it as a new message, and mention Win 8 in your message header. I think things are getting a bit off track in this thread, and I believe you might get more and appropriate Win 8 help with a fresh thread.
Ok I’ll do this, thanks!
mike27oct wrote:
Assignment for Prof Carver: On Monday, ask your students: “If I asked you to enter your network user name and password” what do I mean by that?" Please report their responses back to us!
Though you may have asked facetiously for me to do this, I was curious so did…
Consider a typical home network, with a router, possibly with wifi or possibly wifi separately, some computers, and various network devices…
Question: Suppose you plug a new network device of some type into your home network, and you are asked to enter your “network name/password.” What name/password is meant:
(a) the router’s
(b) wifi
(c) another device’s (specify)
(d) unknown, the term is unclear/ambiguous
Twenty sophore and junior CS students in class today, One vote each for (a), (b), and (c). The rest for (d) (a couple didn’t vote). Certainly tried not to prejudice their answers, as I was truly curious.
Also asked whether anyone was familiar with the term “network password” from using Windows. Only two students indicated that they might be (neither seemed sure).
I was not being facetious. I was curious to know, too.
I have to say I would have answered "d’ as well, because your question was not completely clear to me. If one of the choices had been “either a or b” that is what I would have answered. I “knew” it wasn’t “c” because the new device being being plugged in was definitely not the network, but the router or wifi can be, is the logic I would have surmised.
Since most “routers” being sold these past 10 years or more are combined wireless access point/routers, and they are commonly referred to as “wireless routers” or “dual-band routers”, I would have structured the TQ with choice (a) to be “wireless router”. Then I could have eliminated choice “(b) wifi”; I would have kept choice (d), and come up with some throw-away answer for the 4th choice (e.g.“none of the above”) since this was not a real TQ. If the question was structured this way, I would have selected choice (a).
If I appear as someone who is familiar with test question creating, it’s because I do have some pertinent experience in this area. I may have mentioned in the forums elsewhere that I spent 30 years as a publisher’s rep for a major college textbook company. We published books in business, economics and computer science for our specialty areas. Since you are a prof, I know you are well aware that the “package” that surrounds a textbook assists in it’s adoption; especially when it comes to the free test banks publishers provide to adopters. I had textbook and testbank authors in my territory that I got to know very well over the years. I know from them how difficult it is to write well structured TQs with four good answer choices… I was often told by many profs that the test bank was pretty good, but even more told me, “Mike, the test bank for the book su-ks; I can’t even use half the questions!” It is very difficult to create TQs with four good choices as possible answers, and it is taboo to make one of the possible answers to be “none of the above” or “all of the above” . 
I wouldn’t consider “wireless router” as an acceptable answer option, since most wireless routers have two passwords associated with them: (1) the password that lets you login to the router and configure it; (2) the password/passphrase that you set for the wifi encryption. My interest was to find out whether students felt they knew which single password was meant by the phrase “network password.” So clearly I had to distinguish between (1) and (2) above, as an answer of “wireless router” remains ambiguous. I did answer a couple of questions before the voting, making clear the difference between (a) and (b), and saying that they may be in the same wifi router device. You certainly are correct, though,that the exact way questions are set up can change student answers. I feel that they way I asked the question answered what I wanted to know: do “tech people” immediately understand the term “network password” as it relates to a typical home network? I don’t, and neither do these sophmore/junior CS majors.
I have been trying out a few multiple choice questions in our C/Linux programming class. Students are always thrilled hearing there will be multiple choice questions–until they see what I have come up with, as they generally have to completely understand what the answer is to get my questions correct. :smileyvery-happy: Takes lots of time to come up with 4-6 reasonable choices, and not every issue is amenable to this approach, but it makes the grading go a great deal faster.
To me a network password would the password that you had to enter in order to access a secured network. If you attempt to join a network and you are asked for a password then that would be a ‘network password’. I don’t know why you are attempting to find some valid technical definition, its simply two ‘valid’ words strung together.
>>>> I wouldn’t consider “wireless router” as an acceptable answer option, since most wireless routers have two passwords associated with them: (1) the password that lets you login to the router and configure it; (2) the password/passphrase that you set for the wifi encryption.
Problem with this is that we have been discussing logging into a router or Network shares, and both consist of a username and a password, whereas logging into an access point (wireless) only involves using a password (the SSID has already been setup).
So, let’s re-write the question again: use only “router” as a choice; don’t use “wifi” as an answer choice. Leave other choices the same.
Didn’t work for me
well I have wasted at least 20 hours trying to make this thing work. multiply by number of users and put a factor in and it’s a big number. It is not reliable.
