Subtitles of the Movie

A Peer-to-Peer or Workgroup type network is best used in very small networks, typically ten computers or less. Since each computer controls its own security, each computer must have its own security accounts management database. There is no centralized administration, and there is no centralized security and all computers act as both a Client and a Server. The best type of environment for a Peer-to-Peer or Workgroup type of network would be a small home office network, or possibly a small office like a dentist's office or a very small lawyer's office. But security has to come first in networks. And if we use a Peer-to-Peer or Workgroup environment, we have to be very careful about setting up shares. What tends to happen is that there are so many passwords to remember to get to different resources on different computers, that finally somebody just says - "look, we will just print a list of passwords" or "we will just put the passwords onto a Post It note", and put those on everybody's monitor. In which case at that point there is no security. So a Peer-to-Peer or a Workgroup environment only works in a very small environment that does not require a lot of security. In addition, the computers themselves must not require a lot of performance. In other words, we wouldn't necessarily use a Peer-to-Peer or Workgroup model if we were using high-performance workstations to do for example AutoCAD or AutoCAM. If computers need to be able to process only what they need to process and not have to serve others, and if in fact computers need to be able to have dedicated servers to do some of the processing for them, then we would use a Server-Centric environment, in which case the clients are connected through the hub to the Server. The Server acts as the giver and the Clients are the takers of the resources. This gives tremendous increased performance, but it still is only recommended for ten or fewer clients because of the security issues involved. Most of the training that we will have in this Server+ training will be in regards to Server environments. And most Server environments are going to be in a Domain or Active Directory environment. But we are not going to focus on the Domain or the Active Directory environment, that's a whole other subject. What we are going to focus on is how we get computers set up and configured, and how we maintain the Servers so that they can provide the resources to the clients. So in our next section, we will take a look at some of the different categories of servers that we can set up. And what each of the different categories of servers provides for the network.