Computer Server at Home

[Charlievibe]

Has anyone hooked up their PC's at home to a home-based server? If so, was it hard and did it require any special software? Thanks.

[ullbergm]

Quote, originally posted by Charlievibe »Has anyone hooked up their PC's at home to a home-based server? If so, was it hard and did it require any special software? Thanks.What are you going to use the server for? Filesharing?Webserver?If you want do use a computer for filesharing you could load a desktop OS on it if you already have a license. Or if you wanted to you could go buy a server license.The server os will handle filesharing a little better but for a home machine you probably wont need it.

[kostby]

What is your objective? Share a high-speed internet connection? Share printers? Share files? Casually, once in a while, a few megabytes at at time? If both (all) of your computers have Pentium processors, you probably don't need a dedicated file/print server.I have a 2-station wired 10/100BaseT network in my home office: a 233Mhz Pentium running Windows 98 Second Edition and a laser printer, and a 2.0Ghz Pentium4 running Windows XP-SP2 and an inkjet printer.I'm using a 10/100BaseT crossover cable between the computers. (I have a 4-port mini hub and standard 10/100BaseT cables available, for the extremely rare occasion when I want to add a 3rd or 4th network device such as a notebook computer or network-ready printer.)Most modern Intel Pentium (233Mhz and faster) Windows computers running Windows 98 Second Edition or later are plenty fast enough to use Windows peer-to-peer networking if you're only sharing files and/or peripherals like printers, especially if they're USB. I don't share an internet connection because both of my computer have dial-up modems and I don't have a high-speed internet connection.It's relatively easy to use peer-to-peer file and printer sharing between Windows computers with LAN adapters installed, particularly if both computers have Windows 98 Second Edition or newer.I haven't tried the wireless 802.11b/g network thing yet, simply because I only have two computers and they're both in the same room. Without getting into a really detailed technical setup, if you're using Windows XP, it's a snap, assuming two computers with 10/100/1000BaseT network adapters installed/built in and a crossover cable between them: On the Windows XP computer:Click on StartSelect and click on 'My Network Places'Right there to the left of the screen under 'Network Tasks' are the Wizards you need to get started:- Setup a small home or office network- Set up a wireless networkI copy files from one unit to another, and share printers. For speed reasons, I do most of my graphics work on my Pentium 4 box and my version-specific word processing with an old copy of Microsoft Office 97 on my Pentium 233.My newest acquisition is a Hewlett Packard 1320 Duplex Laser Printer with both a legacy parallel port and a USB 2.0 port which are both active, so technically, I don't need to share it on the network, but I do. I also have a Canon inkjet printer on the Pentium 4 box as a shared device for printing color and photos.Hope this wasn't too technical, and that it answers your questions. Let me know!

[jimincalif]

Depends what you want to do. At home we've got 5 Win XP systems and 1 Win ME box networked peer-to-peer thru a Linksys router that also connects our DSL (all wired, pulled cat 5e throughout the house while doing a remodel.) Also have a linux(fedora) box running a mail server and Apache web server hosting my daughter's web site. My son has just installed Apache for Windows, MySQL and a mail server on his older XP machine as well. We share printers thru a stand-alone linksys printserver. Also have a large disk on one XP machine that have shared and use for backup from the other boxes.For most home applications you would not need an actual server OS like Win Server 2003. File and print sharing, use any box (do recommend XP, or Win 2K, both are far better than older versions for networking.)

[Charlievibe]

Thank you to all of you for responding. What I would like to be able to do is share files and printer from computer to computer in my house. I have one computer downstairs and one upstairs. The upstairs computer has the printer and the downstairs computer has the files I want to share. Internet is not an issue for sharing, I am on a dial-up and both computers have modems. It sounds like I don't need to install a server. Rather, I need to set the computers up to share files and install a wireless network connection between the two.If that doesn't sound right, please correct me. I won't be doing this in the next week, so we have time to discuss it!!!Thanks again for all of the insight!!

[Jahntassa]

That's about right... you can also set up Internet Connection Sharing if they're XP systems, and only have one of the systems actually using the modem, but both using the internet.Do you typically leave your computers on all the time? That would make it easier..If you get a couple of wireless cards (or USB adapters), use the Network setup wizard on both computers, and it should make it easy to setup.

[joatmon]

whether you go wireless or wired, or one of each may depend on what network interfaces are in the computers now, and the layout of the place. wireless routers usually have a couple of connectors for network cables.I have one desktop and several laptops in the house, the wireless router is near the stationary desktop and the desktop connects by a cable. The laptops range about the house and grounds and connect via wireless.

[kostby]

Use caution and follow all the precautions with your wireless network setup to prevent unauthorized access.Recently I was using a laptop with built-in wireless LAN at a friends' home and just for grins, I found FIVE wireless networks in his neighborhood!Several networks had the name of the homeowner set as the network name, so IF I bad intentions in mind, I'd instantly know who it was, and potentially what kind of information was there. Potentially hazardous example: The first LAN on the list was a local insurance agent!

[Charlievibe]

Quote, originally posted by kostby »Use caution and follow all the precautions with your wireless network setup to prevent unauthorized access.Recently I was using a laptop with built-in wireless LAN at a friends' home and just for grins, I found FIVE wireless networks in his neighborhood!Several networks had the name of the homeowner set as the network name, so IF I bad intentions in mind, I'd instantly know who it was, and potentially what kind of information was there. Potentially hazardous example: The first LAN on the list was a local insurance agent!After reading your post, and everyone else's, and thinking about it, I have decided for now to buy a CD burner for the computer downstairs and just share files that way. thank you to everyone who answered my question. I am going to print out this posting for my computer records at home so down the road, I can look more into this matter.Thanks!!!

[Kari]

The new wireless routers basically walk you through all of the security stuff, so it's pretty easy to make sure everything is enabled and your network is safe. I had a hard enough time typing the keycode myself to get my own computer on the network, so it would be hell for a hacker to try to generate it and get it in there properly. Anyway, I have a Netgear wireless router connected to our cable modem, my parents' PC hardwired to the router for its connection, I'm using wireless on my iBook and sharing the internet with my Linux box via a plain cat5 cable and the built-in ethernet card. Pretty screwed up setup, but so far it's working nicely. I'm able to share files *easily* between the Linux box and the iBook, and I can see my iBook from the Windows PC, but the Mac isn't too keen on finding the Windows PC...not sure why and didn't really care enough to look into it too much. I did have the Windows machine sharing the printer, but my parents' old printer has no Mac drivers so I was able to see it and have it act like it would print, but then it wouldn't print. Filesharing is pretty cool...a lot easier than burning CDs, and faster for sure. Don't let the concept of a network scare you...as long as you enable the security stuff, you should be fine.

[Charlievibe]

This is very encouraging, thank you.

[joatmon]

setting up the home network isn't that hard, and as Kari said it is pretty easy to keep it secure. There are some wireless router threads here already, so if you go for it and need some help, just post it up and people here will get you through it. having a CD burner (or DVD burner) is great, and you should get one if you don't already have one for a number of reasons, but for file sharing it can be a real hassle, and then you have all those CDs to deal with. Also, you can't use the CD burner to do printer sharing. but it really comes down to how much file and printer sharing you need to do. I say go for it, even if you don't have a compelling need to, if for no other reason that to do it, learn it, and add that skill to your others.

[tnpartsguy]

That's ok, I can beat that.....I set up my wireless network at home, and found 4 open networks. One belonged to an insurance agent (yep), the others belong to a Trust Company (what most people would call a Saving & Loan in the good old days), A company that does home apprasels, and the icing on the cake.........The City Governement!! None were secure in ANY way. I called a freind of mine that does computer work, and after he sat in my driveway and had each of their printers print his business card and the message "Your data is in danger!!" he got the business to secure each network, except the city....they left theirs wide open....just moved the antennas so I don't get 5x5 reception anymore.(*BTW, my network was encrypted before I ever turned the wireless on!)

[Jahntassa]

Can't wait till I get my CarPC running! I'm gonna have a wonderful time with NetStumbler and my little USB WiFi... Mwahaha..But yes...everything is fairly simplified these days. I'd also suggest getting a flash drive or USB drive to transfer files, while CDs are fairly inexpensive, they're only burn-once...