Good Morning;

I hope someone can help me. I am VERY new to the computer world and I have very limited knowledge but I'm learning. However, I need some extra outside help. I have to build a server and determine the IP addresses I need, what scheme I will use and why I would use them.

I have all this knowledge rolling around in my head but can't connect the dots just yet.

I hope someone out there would be willing to mentor a newby get her "sealegs" in the computer world.

Thanks
Cannan

Start by telling us what you want to do with this server.
Is it going to be a webserver?
What does your network look like? It is just the one machine or are there more firewalls/switches/machines around?
Are you going to remotely login to the box with ssh?
etc.

Well, I have to build 5 servers. 1email, 1 printer 1 web server and 2 others that I don't know what to make.

It's for a mock company and I have to figure out the "server" for 3 locations, so yes, there will be remote logon's. At each mock location there are 25 internal users that work at each site. I do plan to use a hub for every 5 users. However, I will have clients that will need to access the company for orders and such.

I don't know what my network will look like, because I am not sure what IP address I will use, however, I could be mixing apples and oranges.

So, as you can see. I am VERY much a newby and looking for guidance. I hope this will help in answering your questions.

Cannan
Thanks for getting back to me!!

well depending of the number of computers (inc servers and users) you can at least determine the kind of ip your going to give the computers, you should find out if you need to do vlans to separate traffic of servers and computers, also I would recommend a switch instead of a hub.

Dont think thats a good idea, how many users does the company have, how many computers? lets say theres 20 computers that would mean 4 hubs, what happens if they have to hire and buy a new computer... what happens then? another hub for just that user???
Get a switch, if there are 20 users get a 24 port switch, that way if more computers are bought and users hired they have four ports in the switch left... and so on...

check this out!

Dear Muha and Ricio;

Thanks so much for you help. I have come up with some things that I would like to share if you would be interested in look it over, give your opinion? I have only be in the computer world 6 months and I'm still learning things. I only just last week heard the term "FTP", so again it's the "connecting the dots" that I need help with.

Thanks
Cannan

No worries. Start by posting your ideas. Someone on this board might give you some useful advice. Don't expect others to do your homework though. Cya.

Hi There,

This is my advice:

1) Dont use hubs, use Switches, they are faster and a damn site more efficient (network traffic wise) than hubs are
2) Your IP addressing.

I would use a class C subnet mask (255.255.255.0) This can accomadate 254 network nodes.

if you have 3 sites as i believe you have said then you would setup the following (as an example)

Site 1 Address Range 192.168.50.0/255.255.255.0
Site 2 Address Range 192.168.51.0/255.255.255.0
Site 3 Address Range 192.168.52.0/255.255.255.0

then via a router or server role on an existing server, you would have VPN connections to each site. that way node 192.168.50.85 at site 1 can communicate with server 192.168.51.2 at site 2

3) if its a server that is going to be accessed from the Internet, then it should do web serving applications only like mail server or web server.
4) a server can be used for more than one application. you dont need a seperate server for each application you are running
5) File and print services work very happily on the same server
6) Place your web serving server at the head site
7) File server at each site, preferrably in a cluster, that way each site has a quick response time and your VPN channels are not hogged by files and printer requests!
8) security, make sure its secure

HTH BlackFish