Although traditional networking has always involved dedicated servers, you could almost always find specialized software to enable clients to share certain resources. Novell Personal NetWare, for example, enabled DOS-based clients to share disk space and printers. Since Microsoft introduced Windows for Workgroups,with its built-in server capabilities, all subsequent desktop computer operating systems—including Windows NT Workstation, 95, 98, 2000,ME, and XP—have supported some form of client-based sharing. These products enable machines to act as clients or servers, or as both at the same time. Every machine is the same in this
respect, and we say that they are all peers (equals) because you don’t need a dedi-cated server. Too good to be true? Yes and no!
So-called peer-to-peer networking (see Figure 1-3) is ideal for small offices or groups of people who need to share a printer or two (you can do this and still be part of a bigger client/server network), but running a PC as both a client and a server is hard work, and the system will slow down rapidly as other clients access its shared resources. There are other issues with peer-to-peer networking as well. What happens if someone switches off the PC at the end of the day while others are still accessing it? Security on such a network is not too great either. Although it is true that you can control access to your disk through the shared network con-
nection, if your PC is in the middle of the office and someone wants your data, that person can just walk over and get it directly from your PC (if you haven’t locked it). That’s not so easy to do when you have a dedicated server in a secure computer room. Data control is another problem with peer-to-peer networking
if you have several PCs all sharing their disk space. Since it’s easy to lose track of where something has been saved,multiple copies of the same document or file are virtually inevitable. Using a dedicated server provides one central point for stor- age—and there’s probably someone tasked with making regular backups, too.
respect, and we say that they are all peers (equals) because you don’t need a dedi-cated server. Too good to be true? Yes and no!
So-called peer-to-peer networking (see Figure 1-3) is ideal for small offices or groups of people who need to share a printer or two (you can do this and still be part of a bigger client/server network), but running a PC as both a client and a server is hard work, and the system will slow down rapidly as other clients access its shared resources. There are other issues with peer-to-peer networking as well. What happens if someone switches off the PC at the end of the day while others are still accessing it? Security on such a network is not too great either. Although it is true that you can control access to your disk through the shared network con-
nection, if your PC is in the middle of the office and someone wants your data, that person can just walk over and get it directly from your PC (if you haven’t locked it). That’s not so easy to do when you have a dedicated server in a secure computer room. Data control is another problem with peer-to-peer networking
if you have several PCs all sharing their disk space. Since it’s easy to lose track of where something has been saved,multiple copies of the same document or file are virtually inevitable. Using a dedicated server provides one central point for stor- age—and there’s probably someone tasked with making regular backups, too.
