Setting up my own home office 'corporate' computing environment

Factual Questions
22

@Reply and @DPRK and “at” everyone else, thank you!

This all makes complete sense, and helps clear up my 90s-based confusion. With damn near every computer nowadays having WiFi capability (which wasn’t the case back when I was in college), it sounds like TripCoReamsAndBeets just needs a good local WiFi router with an attached storage drive to accomplish the basic needs.

Most of my ignorance comes from working experience, again, back in college (~20 yrs ago) where we had to connect individual workstations in the Computer Lab to a LAN to enable them to have connectivity to the server for internet service. Don’t need to do that anymore.

For the Farm, I can work around some of the obstacles and LIMFACs of dial-up, and filesharing. The key, though, sounds like getting a decent WiFi router (or two). I seem to recall setting up our two computers here currently at the house recently, that there was a “Network Discovery” option. . . what is that/does that do?

Tripler
Not currently employed by TripCoReamsAndBeets A future, small, humble company. . .

23

One your network is set up (and firewalled…), turning Windows Network Discovery on scans the network to look for things like routers, printers, and other computers that have services accessible over the network. You might need to use this if you are setting up a Windows workgroup, for example.

24

Thanks guys! I’m saving this thread, so that in another twenty years, when I retire to beet farmin’ and paper sales, I’ll have a head start.

Tripler
“Learning has been achieved.”

25

I expect in twenty years high-speed internet will be available at TripCo (better known as Schrute Farms), so that you’re not forced to host your own file and mail servers.

26

In 20 years the beets will probably be farming us

27

. . . and will probably have better Internet too.

Tripler
I’ll retire and start a new ISP: Beet.net