Questions about peer-to-peer and client/server setups

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Setting up a Peer-to-peer network seems ok in theory, all you need is a switch, some PCs, LAN ips for each PC and then setup your file sharing on all PCs?? Or you could have 2 NIC's on each PC and cable them direct together i think, i don't hik you need a roiuter for a basic p2p network that doesn't have intenet. So,

1) If i add a printer to this switch in this p2p network will all PCs on this network be able to access the printer or how do i set this up ?

2) What would i have to do to make this network a client/server network, obvioulsy i would need to add a server(to the switch??) with Win NT, 2003, 2008 etc..installed on the server??, but how do i configure the server to act as the 'gateway??' that it should in a c/s setup. In other words make the server the administator and and stop the etowrk it behaving as just a p2p network?

 

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If you add a network printer to this network, you'll just have to assign that printer a ip on the network segment your at, I would look up your documentation but when setup alright yes it will be accessable for all pc's in your network.

You only use a gateway when you try to route traffic to another network, since you are not trying to route to another network there is no point in setting your server as gateway, unless you have another nic in your server that connects the server to another network (the internet for example).
- Basically you'll just have to deploy the server, in case of server 2003 promote it to domain controller with dcpromo (additionally you can use it as dhcp server aswell to not deal anymore with static ip's on your network)
- Add all your workstations to the domain to get yourself your client-server network with centralized management.

 

Gateway was the wrong terminology to use, i just meant the admin PC on the network, analogous to a router acting as a gateway where all PCs route through it sort of thing.

So how do you assign a printer an ip in a p2p network, the printer must come with a built in ip so you can access it in the first place to be able to set the ip of your choice??

 

Typically, by pushing buttons on the physical printer, itself.

You won't be able to set an IP address on the printer if the printer is connected to a PC - the printer must be directly connected to the network using twisted-pair cable.

 

A router is a gateway because it will in a home situation route the traffic between your internal lan (most likely 192.168.0.0/24 or 192.168.1.0/24 depending on your router) and the internet (in a company this can be the gateway to route traffic from 192.168.0.0/24 to 192.168.1.0/24 for instance, since these are 2 seperate network segments and thus require routing to reach each other). To communicate with other computers in your home the computers dont need a gateway. As soon as you make your computers members of a domain to get centralized management your pc's will know where your server is.

 

If the printer is connected to a pc via USB, then simply right click the installed printer icon and share the printer, this in effect makes the pc connect to the printer a print server.

If the printer is connected via ethernet cable it still needs to be installed on a computer (at least any i have come across have), then there are several ways to assign an ip address to the printer.

As Michael has stated some printers allow you to enter network settings via buttons on the printer, when setting up printers for the first time, some printer print a test page stating the ip address current assigned to printer, it will mostly be the case of setting a pc to the same network settings , the using a internet browser, type the ip address of the printer in the address field, this will take you to the printer setup page, a bit like you would do when setting up a adsl router. There you can change the network settings on the router and bob's your uncle.

Some routers will grap an ip from a dhcp server and like before print a test page showing the printers network settings.

All thats left to do is map to printer via ip address or name.

When you set up a domain, you will need to add computers to that domain, during the process of adding a machine to a domain, you are in effect telling the client to use the server.

 

Off course, I was just trying to explain in simple terms when you have a gateway, in his setup he wants to have a network without access to the outside world, just 1 lan. And you dont need a gateway for that. And afaik a usb modem isnt a router right? With a USB modem your pc will have the internet IP and the modem only does the modulation/demodulation.

 

Read my second post,

I said it was an analogy to a router gateway.