Hello all,

I work for a small company who are about to set up a small office network. As the resident geek in the office i've a feeling it's going to fall on me to set up and troubleshoot the network (actually i know it is). My question is this, Apart from a server (doh!), network cards and cables, (and obviously a linux pc firewall keeping the net's nastier inhabitants at bay) what other hardware (or software even) are we going to need for the internal network?. Also any suggestions of reliable server hardware would be welcome

I have a small home network of 5 linux pc's and a router - a very simple set up (infact they seemed to set themselves up - scary), but i've never done anything like this on such a large scale (between 15-20 pc's ALL running that other os). What problems am i likely to encounter when beginning my grand project?


Most Importantly:- How can i convince my boss that having a linux server really is a better idea than having windows server os (which i have Zero experiance of using and since im the sucker thats gonna have to fix it WHEN it all goes wrong....)

Cheers

A 24 port 100 mpbs switch (any MAKE) or 2-3 (8 port) hubs for seperate deparments.

A DSL router for your internet connection.

Personally i am using 1 IBM x series 206 server (P4-3.0 Ghz, 1GB RAM & 76 GB HD) for my main samba file & print server & few normal P4 boxes for Proxy & backup server.

For mailing solution now it depends on your company.

Get some enterprise edition distro cds. I use RHEL4.

I am also having a setup of around 30-40 computers in my company.

Reasons for *NIX..
Low hardware costing.
More secure networks.
Lesser virus/spyware threats.
& reasons to visit LQ

And last & most important things, Get yourself trained or get used to of things you are going to implement in real live network.

Thanks
..amit..

Would you like to have a windows domain here? In that case XP home would be insufficent (you will need xp pro). All the requiered linux software is free. And windows doesn't need any. With 15-20 pc's you would need anything more than any not-to-old computer. Were you planning separate server and firewall here? One box should be sufficient.

There shouldn't be any problems. But you will need to read up on samba, dhcpd, squid / iptables. And optionally BIND and some mail server.

1. It doesnt cost any money.

2. It will save you a lot of the time they pay for. ( as linux is your "native" os. )

3. (If anything else failes to convince him.) In any other case he will have someone else to monitor the server.