Dedicated Servers and Peers

In some networks, a server computer is a server computer and nothing else.
It’s dedicated to the sole task of providing shared resources, such as hard
drives and printers, to be accessed by the network client computers. Such a
server is referred to as a dedicated server because it can perform no other
task besides network services.

Other networks take an alternative approach, enabling any computer on the
network to function as both a client and a server. Thus, any computer can
share its printers and hard drives with other computers on the network. And
while a computer is working as a server, you can still use that same computer
for other functions such as word processing. This type of network is called
a peer-to-peer network, because all the computers are thought of as peers,
or equals.



Here are some points to ponder concerning the difference between dedicated
server networks and peer-to-peer networks while you’re walking the dog
tomorrow morning:
 Peer-to-peer networking features are built into Windows. Thus, if your
computer runs Windows, you don’t have to buy any additional software
to turn your computer into a server. All you have to do is enable the
Windows server features.
 The network server features that are built into desktop versions of
Windows (such as Windows XP) aren’t very efficient because these versions
of Windows were not designed primarily to be network servers. If
you’re going to dedicate a computer to the task of being a full-time server,
you should use a special network operating system instead of the standard
Windows operating system. A network operating system, also known
as a NOS, is specially designed to handle networking functions efficiently.
The two most commonly used network operating systems are the server
version of Windows — which, depending on the version you use, is known
as Windows Server 2003, Windows 2000 Server, or Windows NT Server —
and Novell NetWare. I describe these alternatives briefly in the next section,
“The NOS Choice.”
 Many networks are both peer-to-peer and dedicated-server networks at
the same time. These networks have one or more server computers that
run a NOS such as Windows Server 2003, as well as client computers
that use the server features of Windows to share their resources with
the network.
 Besides being dedicated, it’s helpful if your servers are also sincere.