What is the best OS to have on the server of a star-topology LAN that will be serving Windows 95 workstations? Is Linux, the most cost-effective solution, an option here? Will I have to shell out for Windows NT or Windows 95? How about if the LAN is directly connected to the internet (no intermediate dialup)? And don’t try to convince me to change the OS of the workstations. I have bought too much Windows 95 software for me to junk it all now.
Well, as a hobbyist running the tiniest of LAN’s at home, I may not be the best to answer this, but I would say that in many ways the MOST critical question is really about the skills and knowledge of the administrator. Linux or a *BSD may have an advantage in terms of stability - Windows NT probably has an advantage in terms of array of available software and attention to user-friendly interfaces - but any of those advantages pretty much disappear when the administrator doesn’t know the OS well. Someone who is real comfortable with MS products and has spent a lot of time working on NT networks ought to be able to set up a reasonably stable NT system - and could be set up for a lot of trouble if they have to learn a *nix OS to run the LAN. Similarly, a *nix administrator will find most of the configuration things easy to do in their OS - and will find the GUI tools provided in NT systems awkward and difficult, and will have little or no use for all the extra programs.
My impression would be that NT is a substantially superior choice to Win’9X for most server tasks, and my suspicion would be that the extra expense would be worth it in that case unless your budget is REAL tight - so I would stay away from the “desktop” Windows versions.
If the administrator is not chosen, or is going to have to learn the OS regardless of which one is chosen, then I would probably be most prone to using one of the “free” software OS’s, because I like the education and support models a bit better - I think the combination of stuff available (books, HowTo documents, news groups, user groups, etc.) provides more opportunities for people to learn valuable “deep” information about the OS as they get answers to specific problems. This is a marginal difference, since most of this are available in the Windows world as well, but the prevalence of the “tech support line” model shits things a bit - and I think leads to more people tending to try to solve one specific problem at a time, and therefore learning less. (This may reflect other biases as well - my home systems are a firewall running OpenBSD, and a desktop computer running Linux most of the time, but occaisionally booting into Win’98 for entertainment)
So, rather than concentrating on the technical merits of an Operating System, I would suggest focusing the question first on the people who have to support things, and what they can or want to do.
You have answered your own question. Welcome to the world of Windoze 2000.
It depends on a lot of information you haven’t supplied.
What are you doing with the LAN? File sharing, printer sharing, shared Internet access, client-server computing, heavy database usage, …? How mission-critical is it that the LAN remain up? Running any internet servers? What level of security do you desire?
For basic file and printer sharing, you don’t need any servers. Just turn on file and/or printer sharing on the workstations with files or printers that you want to share. There are several steps beyond that; Linux is probably the lasst step, unless you are a Linux guru already or need it for some other reason. For security, never allow file and printer sharing over TCP/IP; install and use NETBEUI for that (it’s better anyway). In “ControlPanel”, “Network”, “TCP/IP”, “Properties”, “Bindings” tab, there should be no check-mark by “File and Printer Sharing for Microsoft Network”; by default, there will be one there.
For Internet sharing, a low-end router is probably best. I’ve heard a lot of good things about the Linksys BEFSR41 (around $160 street) which includes a four-port hub and the BEFSR11 (around $100 street) which is the same thing with no hub. At home I have a Zyxel Prestige 310 (around $230 street, $249 direct) which has a few more features and has done the job incredibly well for me. Believe me, a router is much better then running sharing software on a workstation. Turn on the DHCP server in the router and let it hand out IP addresses to your workstaions, except for any workstations on which you are running Web servers (the Zyxel allows outside “punch-through” to those servers, and I think the Linksys does also).
Another question to answer before making a decision is what exactly the server will be serving to the client workstations. Is this to be strictly a common file storage area, or are there other server processes that’ll be run on it (e-mail, web, etc.). Also, how powerful and flexible does the security need to be? What are the performance expectations? I mean, you could simply use the peer file sharing features of Win95 if the load on the server is light, the number of clients low, the security expectations moderate, and the budget thin or non-existent. I wouldn’t want to do it in an environment where the expectations for performance and stability were high, but in a pinch . . . .
If the LAN is directly connected to the Internet, then you’ll definitely want to maintain some type of firewall, and for that Linux would be the most flexible, lowest cost option (especially if e-mail and other services are anticipated), provided that you’re comfortable with *nix.
Oh, I forgot to mention; a router gives you a pretty solid firewall by default.
For a small office with no dedicated IT person, Microsoft NT Small Business Server is an excellent choice. It comes pre-configured, has wizards to do the rest, is easy to install, and cheap. It comes with a proxy server/firewall, SQL server, and a whole bunch of other stuff.
I’ve set up half a dozen small businesses with this package, and they all love it.
My LAN will just be an in-home system that will be used for games, file-sharing, and internet access if possible. I will be the sysadmin for this LAN, and I’m not averse to learning a Linux system. However, I’ll doubtless end up on Windows NT because of ease of use. Will Windows NT be compatable with Windows 95 software? And what’s this about Windows 2000? How does that fit in? How easy will it be for me to connect a LAN to the internet directly without having to go through a dialup system? The idea of a firewall is good, but I still want telnet, FTP, and the ability to select which ports are blocked and which ports are open. Any help will be appreciated, especially references to internet links or books on the subject.
I like Novell. My high school had 4 Novell servers and an NT server. The NT server had a lot more problems than any of the Novell servers and the Novell servers had heavier use.
If you are talking about a home network use linux or win95. Red hat linux comes with a free Novell emulator (I couldn’t get it to work though).
If you want the server to be the router use linux or windows 2k.
Windows NT 4, Windows 2000 (the latest version of WIndows NT, which should have been called NT 5), Windows 95, Windows 98, and WIndows ME (Millenium Edition, the successor to Windows 98) are all compatible through Microsoft Networking. Most of the programs you bought for WIndows 95 will run on NT 4 and almost all of those will work on Windows 2000
It sounds as if you don’t even need NT; just turn on file and printer sharing in the various computers, make sure NETBEUI is installed and TCP/IP is not bound to file and printer sharing, and have a firewall.
However, NT is more stable than 95/98/ME, and just about any game will run on it (given a decent graphics card with good drivers). I run a dual Pentium Pro 200 with a Voodoo3 PCI graphics card under NT 4.0, and I haven’t found a recent game that doesn’t work. Warcraft II runs unacceptably slow, but Warcraft II Battle Net Edition works fine. Quake III is just fine, as is Jedi Knight and others.
If you have a working non-dialup Internet connection, then it’s really easy to hook up through a router. You plug the DSL/cable/whatever modem to the router with a category 5 RJ-45 cable. If the “WAN” light doesn’t come on in the router, repeat with a crossover cable (included with most routers). Similarly connect the router to a hub looking for the “LAN” light on the router. Connect a computer to the router (this may require connecting the router to a serial port on a computer or accessing it via a Web browser over the LAN or whatever, depending on the router). Tell the router the IP address your ISP gave you or where to get an IP address, tell it your ISP’s DNS servers, turn on DHCP, (sometimes) tell it where to go to get the current time, and you’re done. All routers will include instructions and how to handle special cases (RoadRunner cable modem is usually a slightly special case, but all recent routers handle it). The reviewers have said that the Linksys instructions are very clear, and some have said they didn’t like the Zyxel instructions very much … I had no problem with the Zyxel instructions, but perhaps some people could.
Really, really … a hardware router is the very best solution. It’s the easiest to set up, includes a firewall, doesn’t depend on any particular computer being on and not crashed, doesn’t interfere with the operation of any computer, doesn’t need cleint software laoded on each workstation, and (being a dedicated special-purpose computer) is even more stable than Linux. Anything initiated from your LAN (telnet, ftp, http, …) will not even know the firewall is there. The Zyxel will run most games (Doom, Quake I II & III, Jedi Knight, Warcraft II, …) with local or remote servers and handle most ICQ stuff without any setup, and the Linksys may be similar. If you want to run a Quake server for access from the outside you’ll have to do some setup, and if you want to accccess some of the gaming sites there may be some setup.
Forget Novell. Don’t even think the word.
You pretty much answered your own question there.
You can easily set up and “administer” a Win98 machine for a home network to act as a pseudo server. Although it is not as powerful as an NT system, for home networks and some small businesses (I have my client’s California office with 7 machines connected in a peer-to-peer that connects to the main offices here in C Springs) it’s a viable solution.
The main advantage to NT for a smaller office is for security reasons, say you run an accounting program and only a few people should have access to these files. Other than that for a small home network, NT is going over board, especially considering the cost of NT or Win2000 Server. Plus you have to consider the learning curve of Win NT or 2000 Server.
I have my two machines connected through a hub that a client no longer needed – it was free. (You can easily find a small, decent hub for around $70.) One machine 98 and the other 95.
I established sharing and gave them each a unique IP address (I did not enable NETBEUI) starting with the accepted IP numbers of 192.68.0.1 with a subnet mask of 255.255.255.0 with the other machine at 192.68.0.2 – you can go up from there to about 255 machines, I think and not recommended though. (Microsoft has more on this in their Knowledge Base.)
Of course you have to establish a workgroup and an identity for each computer in Network Properties.
You can still do this in a Win95 environment but, as much as Win98 is flakey product, it does give you advantages if at least one machine has Win98 that Win 95 doesn’t.
As for a firewall, there is a free solution for non-commerical users at http://www.zonelabs.com/default.htm. It’s not as comprehensive as a full hardware or software firewall solution but for the average consumer it will do the job.
Derleth, how many machines are you going to LAN? How far are they from each other? There are tons of do it yourself networks you can do that work well with W95. Just visit on online computer store like buy.com & search.