4. Conclusion

Peer-to-peer networks can be implemented with very little investment costs, but in order for the network to work properly, the users must be very experienced with computers, and strict guidelines must be implemented and followed in order for the data to remain secure and archived properly. In my experience, peer-to-peer networks tend to become more of a headache instead of a help after about 6 computers, especially if your company has a moderate employee turnover.

5. Client-Server Network

The Client-Server network model usually consists of one or more server computers that provide services and information to a number of workstation computers. These services can consist of many different roles, including: file services, web services, email services, domain name lookup services, document version system services, Internet sharing services, etc. A great example of the Client-Server network model is actually the World Wide Internet. On the Internet clients, or computer with web browsers, access web sites that are hosted on servers.

This model differs from the Peer-to-peer network model in that the servers do not dually act as a workstation, and the workstations do not act as servers, and if they do act as a server, they should be configured to allow the central servers to provide access restrictions on the shares they provide the network.

6. Example

The network is setup with a main file server, that also stores all the users email. Every night the main file server is backed up to a secondary file server that is located in an adjacent building. The network also has a network firewall computer that serves an Internet connection to the network, and forwards all email to the file server. The file server has different shares for each department so only people in that department has access to the files, and also has a company wide share that everyone in the company has access to the files. Each user also has a home directory on the main file server for personal documents that no one else can access. The network also has two large laser printers and a commercial color laser printer, all the printers are connected to the main file server through a jet direct interface.

The client computers all map a drive letter (L:) to the company wide share, and also map a drive letter (M:) to the department share, and the clients can print to whichever printer they need to. The drive mappings occur during a login script that is ran when the client computer logs in to the network. Each department has at least one zip drive on its computers which is shared for backups and convenience. Each employee has a separate email account, and all email messages reside on the main file server, so if any of the workstation computers goes down, the emails are still intact.

7. Benefits

The Client-Server network model offers many benefits that stems from the fact that only a single computer, or group of computers are the central repository for all the networking services that you may need.

Security is relatively easy to implement with this type of network model, since you can setup a single server computer to handle all information requests or login requests for the entire network, thus you only need one username and password for each user on the network. So if you ever need to change a password, you only need to change it at the server and the password would be changed for the entire network.

Information control is also fundamentally easier with this type of network model because you can have individual server computers store all the important documents of you company on a single store. In doing this you gain the ability to easily archive all the companies documents, as well as provide a secure, easy to access network store for all of your users, reducing the possibility of misplaced documents on your network. Other information can also be controlled by individual servers, such as all of the company's email and contact lists can be stored on a single mail server, or all of the company's policies and public documents can be store on an internal web server or ftp server.

With the Client-Server network model, each workstation only really needs to have one theoretical connection on the network, and that connection is to the main server as illustrated in the image below. Because of this, the maintenance cost for the network drops. Also, since all the important information of the network actually resides on the servers, the workstation maintenance also drops since the users can access any information they need through any workstation, and a faulty workstation computer will have very little effect on the usefulness of the network. I actually have setup networks where the workstation computers are backed up to an image on a central server, so if a workstation goes down, a technician can restore the image and have the workstation back up literally within minutes.

There are numerous other benefits to this type of network, most stem from the fact that you consolidate information or security to a single computer, or groups of computers. Once this is done, adding other services to the network is both easier and more secure.