Networking four Win2k machines

[Simon Pleasants]

I realise this is a very basic question and perhaps if people do not
wish to answer directly themselves they can post hyperlinks to places
which can.

Basically, we are a small charity radio station. We have four
machines of varying power and operated three of them over a basic
network using an old hub. They all ran Windows 98 so there was
nothing really complicated taking place. The machines could all see
and had full access to each other and no machine acted as a server.

There respective jobs were - on air playout system, primary editing
system, office machine and library computer (not networked).

We have now built two completely new machines as replacements for the
playout system and editing machines and they run Win2k. Naturally
this introduced a new level of networking - now we had to think about
things like security and sharing, not to mention permission levels
etc. As I have a basic knowledge of networking I was able to deal
with some minor issues early on, such as the refusal of the Win2k
machines to share anything with the remaining Win98 machine. Shortly
we will be upgrading the remaining Win98 machine, which includes
moving it over to Win2k as well. In addition an old machine,
pensioned off by my company, but which comes with Win2k as well,
arrives to replace the 286 library machine, thus completing the new
network.

Essentially, there are no problems, I can configure each machine to
talk with appropriate permissions to all the others and I assign
accounts with the relevent level of priviledge to everyone.

The difficult part comes with the fact that we have now been given
access to a much wider network belonging to the organisation we work
with. This means our hub is to be connected to a network socket,
through which we will be able to access their network, email server
and internet connection. This access needs to be shared across all
the machines on our own network (remember we have no server) and our
network needs to be isolated from theirs with a firewall.

Any suggestions on how to tackle this last part would be gratefully
received.

 

[Dave]

If I understand what you are doing, you have it done; just
connect your hub to their network and you will be
connnected. If the company has a domain, you will need to
join it which you can do by pressing the Windows and
Pause/Break keys, click the Network Identification tab
then the Properties button. It will take someone with
Admin rights on the domain to create the computer accounts.

 

[Simon Pleasants]

If I understand what you are doing, you have it done; just
connect your hub to their network and you will be
connnected. If the company has a domain, you will need to
join it which you can do by pressing the Windows and
Pause/Break keys, click the Network Identification tab
then the Properties button. It will take someone with
Admin rights on the domain to create the computer accounts.

The network is set up, but assessing the best way of connecting it to
the new wider network is the more problematic bit. I don't want
access to the Trust network to be shared out via a single machine
which must always be on (as I said we have no server).

At my place of work, which is admittedly a little more gifted in terms
of money and technology, we have a 1Mb internet connection via a
satellite modem with a hardware firewall which is run directly into
the network switch. I had hoped it might be possible to do something
similar with our connection to the Trust network, although clearly
this would require buying extra kit.