Hi,

When I have to work on my machine in company, I have noticed that I log on to a domain (named on the basis of company name) and not really on that computer. From, what I understand, this has a few advantages, the primary being that I just need one password for the domain and can work through any of the machines in company. My questions are :

What software on desktop/network have to be installed so that the desktop recognizes and gives me option of logging into a domain. I would guess that a software can be installed on desktop, and there we can configure the IP address of domain server of company and port number, which handles authentication. Is this correct? This takes me to another question that how are softwares installed on end machines in a company. Going to each machine physically and installing looks very unweildy from administrator point of view. An obvious solution would be to install softwares (and updates) over network. My question on this are:

What protocols,keywords come into picture when administrator installs OS,softwares,updates from his administrator machine to end machine through network.

Thanks,