first time setting up a small network. I want to learn

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dino

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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 PC’s 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 don’t 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 PC’s (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 don’t 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 don’t 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
 
First, why do you need a firewall/gateway? You can buy a $50 Linksys/Netgear/whoever internet router and it would do just as much good as a firewall (block all incoming ports). Find a company to do their webhosting/email management. This has three major advantages:

1 - no hardware to manage
2 - you can block ALL incoming ports
3 - no software to manage

You can get web/email hosting dirt cheap nowadays, and unless their website requirements are somehow odd, having another company host is ideal. I'm assuming you DON'T want to become their IT guy.

So given what you've said, all you need is a router, a hub/switch ($50-$150 depending on model/# of ports) and misc cabling and a web hosting service. That's it, no muss, no fuss.

No for file sharing/serving, any ole pc will do. If Linux is your thing, then more power to ya. Again, if you don't want to become their free IT guy, make the choice based on whatever YOU can get setup easily and have THEM maintain somewhat easily. Do you know how to setup the box for unattended backups to tape/cdr/cdrw/dvdr on Linux, Windoze, OSX? Choose the OS that allows you to do this. Do you know how to get Samba working on Linux? Do you know how to get the Windoze machines to print to a printer hanging off a Linux box (assuming the printer itself is not networkable). So anyway, when you're deciding on the file server, choose the system that allows you to easily set it up for file/print sharing and backups. Because again, you won't impress anyone if you struggle for weeks to get something setup that fails every other week.
 
I second binaryDigit's advice.

An internal Web or Mail server complicates things in a way that doesn't have much payoff for a small group. http://www.hostway.com has a pretty good deal on Web Server with Email, plus you could open a port on your local network through the router control panel (usually a web page that the router hosts) so you can have the 'file server' accept ftp access from the outside.
 
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