Planning a small LAN

MartMax

Hi

I'm planning to setup a small office LAN, maybe for.. around 10 users. Basically, the computers to be networked are Windows-based mainly XP. Files, printer, calendar, address book, internet sharing are the major reasons to get the network up.

I'm considering to setup a plain peer-to-peer network but I can't see how the network access can be controlled. I understand that network with central server and domain controller offer much more.

Therefore, I'm also considering to bring in MS Small Business Server, I wonder how complicated this would be to setup? Further, I wish that we could minimise down time and technical supervision.

At the moment, we still want to stick to outside e-mail service rather than running our own mail server. Do we have any other alternative? Budget is probably a constraint too.

Any suggestions?

helios

calendar and address book sharing will require some sort of central server, usually an exchange server. Best thing you can do is hook everything up with a switch. You could have a single server doing hosting files and the like...

installing a server isn't too complicated, and if you go with active directory, it will give you a bit more control over who gets what.

NutJob

Definatly a Switched network

Do you want to have Surf control or just straight access. If you want straight access to the web a Linksys router will do the job.

SurfControl requires a Server. For this you could plug ur small business server in and set it up for internet shareing(not recommended)

Exchange is the easiest for shareing calanders mail and .... (outlook stuff)

Go with active directory for better managemnt. Servers not that different from installing a home pc with XP pro just gives you some extra options to play with.

Cable neatly and think BACKUPS

Red Alert

Microsoft SBS has a reputation of being unstable whilst being easy to set up. Have you tried any of Novell's offerings - Open Enterprise Server or Suse Linux Enterprise Server are very easy to set up and the support is excellent. Both can function as domian controllers for Windows PC's, as well as doing file, print, web services.

SurfControl is alright, i'd go for a small separate PC that just does routing, with Squid or possibly SmoothWall on it.

ednwireland

you could always use something like mdaemon which gives you centralised email and allows shared calenders and loads of other groupware features and it allows you to connect via outlook
http://www.altn.com

lot lower overhead than sbs