My wife is going to start working for a new company doing so graphic work. As of right now this is a very small company (4 ppl total) and their network is a setup of 4 PCs that just talk to each other. They do have a DSL line that is split to each computer rather then running to a firewall and then to each computer.
They are looking to upgrade but they dont want to spend much. I would love to walk in there and be able to help them out, as I have never really set up a system from scratch. I think this would be a fantastic learning experience for me and was hoping some of you could help me out.
What I am thinking is getting 2 cheap PCs (400-500MHz and big drives and lots of mem) running Linux (Redhat, Suse, or what not). One would be a firewall/gateway and the other would be a backup file server.
Could anyone tell me if this sounds like a descent idea or a crap one. What about a mail server? I dont think they would want to host there web page within there office as there would be too many problems with power outages, someone screwing around with the files, or something like that.
Also dont forget that there will be at lest 1 Mac running 10.2 and maybe a 2nd Mac within 6 months running 10.2. There will also be at lest 2 printers that would need to be networked (not sure what type yet). I have tried in the past to set up SAMB and damn that is not easy, but this would be a learning experience so lets go for it.
So if you were to design a small (5-10) user network with both Windows Linux and Mac systems how would you do it.
If you could point me to some web pages that would great.
Thanks for any feed back you can give me.
dino
ps. plez forgive my English skills
They are looking to upgrade but they dont want to spend much. I would love to walk in there and be able to help them out, as I have never really set up a system from scratch. I think this would be a fantastic learning experience for me and was hoping some of you could help me out.
What I am thinking is getting 2 cheap PCs (400-500MHz and big drives and lots of mem) running Linux (Redhat, Suse, or what not). One would be a firewall/gateway and the other would be a backup file server.
Could anyone tell me if this sounds like a descent idea or a crap one. What about a mail server? I dont think they would want to host there web page within there office as there would be too many problems with power outages, someone screwing around with the files, or something like that.
Also dont forget that there will be at lest 1 Mac running 10.2 and maybe a 2nd Mac within 6 months running 10.2. There will also be at lest 2 printers that would need to be networked (not sure what type yet). I have tried in the past to set up SAMB and damn that is not easy, but this would be a learning experience so lets go for it.
So if you were to design a small (5-10) user network with both Windows Linux and Mac systems how would you do it.
If you could point me to some web pages that would great.
Thanks for any feed back you can give me.
dino
ps. plez forgive my English skills