Need help deciding on network configuration for a private school <<HELP>>

Dead3ye

Platinum Member
Sep 21, 2000
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A little history first:

I was volunteered (by my wife) to serve on the technology commitee for my chidren's private school. It is very small school, grades K-5 with about 80 students. As you can imagine, their budget is very small and strapped, hence no IT people.

At this point, there are 14 PC's that are networked peer to peer, 10 "student" PC's in lab, and 4 administration PC's. Window flavors are 98, ME, and XP pro. They are all connected to the internet via a router to DSL. This network could grow, but not by much, maybe by 10 - 20 PC's in the next few years.

I'm am not an expert by no means, but I do learn fast and I can manage to keep working what they have now. This is bad because as I see it now, I have the most expertise than anybody else working for the school or serving on any commitee. I have no problem with the hardware installation and setup, but lately I have been pressed into working on networking these machines together.

I need to figure out if this peer to peer network is enough, or should they migrate to a more sophisticated network. The admins do share files (database), something the students don't need to access. I think a file server is in order.

I guess I'm not looking for specfic answers here, but if someone can provide me with links that describe how server based networks are set up and mannaged would be great. I've scoured the web and I havn't found anything useful to me yet.
 

Fiveohhh

Diamond Member
Jan 18, 2002
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Unless you want a hassle and problems(not that workgroups don't have them) I wouldn't go with an AD network and just stick with the workgroup, especially if your not getting paid much. For a server just buy any old(or new)computer and share some folders on it. If your looking for simplicity thats the way to go. It wouldn't be that hard to set up an AD network but would be priceysince you'd need to spend the money on a server OS. Of course there are alternate OS's I just don't know much/anything about them. feel free to PM me if you have any questions, I'll try my best to help ya out.
 

Dead3ye

Platinum Member
Sep 21, 2000
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Originally posted by: Fiveohhh
especially if your not getting paid much

How about zero? :D

The more I'm reading, P2P seems to be the only solution for now. Links would still be appreciated.