Short history lesson here then: Until recently installing Windows (except OEM) meant running driver CDs at least for stuff like network drivers (so you could connect to internet to download the updated drivers).
Short history lesson: I have successfully gotten my Windows installs onto the internet without using driver CDs since at least Windows 98SE.
I dunno what I'm doing that's so magical; I just install the dang thing.
This totally depends on the network card chipset. A fresh Windows 7 install on my PC requires external NIC drivers before I get on the net.
Same here, I installed Windows 7 on a PC with a fairly recent Asus MB and I had to install the drivers from the CD.