help with home network

Hi, I stumbled across this forum looking for help on setting up my own home network. I do have basic knowledge about networking and would appreciate any help you guys can give me.

I am trying to setup a win2k machine as a domain controller on my home network. I will have 4 other machines and possibly more laptops to attach to this network. I also want to use the win2k dc machine as an IIS server and terminal service server. I would also like to share internet among the networked computers. I will be moving into a new apartment and would like to setup the network as soon as I move in early June, so I'm trying to gather info now. Any suggestions on the best way to do this?

Other specific information I am looking for is what information would I need from the ISP in order for the win2k machine to act as a dc on my network, and if ISPs are willing to give that information. Should I be careful with what ISP I pick (maybe because some ISPs give that info out and some do not?)

Info about the network: 5 systems, one dedicated for server use. win2k on server machine, 2 98 machines (can be upgraded to win2k if necessary), 1 win2k pro machine, and 1 winxp pro machine, with the possibility of a mac ibook needing internet access on the network. Its a grabbag of computer systems which I know can be troubling, so your expertise will be greatly appreciated!

I think with that many machines connecting through the network you'll just want to run a router that does DNS/NAT/firewall. Because trying to set up a Windows Domain and make it function isn't a fun ride. Unless you really NEED everyone to log in through your 2000 box i wouldn't recommend it. And through the router you can have much of the same control.

Although it may be a little bit of work to setup the server and what not, wouldn't it mean that making it work would allow me to setup my network without having to buy a router? I currently do not own one and wouldn't want to buy one if I could avoid it. I already own a 24 port switch I got for free from when I worked with a certain company over the summer.
The reason I want the other computers to run through my win2k box is so that all the computers can take advantage of shared filespace available through LAN in the apartment as well as remotely through the internet. I would also like to set up the win2k box for the use of other services like terminal services. I would also like to run a web server from the win2k box that would host websites and possibly do load balancing by adding additional servers on the network? I know that all that other stuff is kinda beyond the scope of setting up a home network. I guess my point is that I need my server to be highly scaleable, and putting all that control into a router wouldn't accomadate growth as well? Thats my main concern

Your Win2k box won't allow you to do load balancing and things like that. Thats all done at a router. Well i guess you could do it through a 2k box, but that would require adding another nic to the box and setting the switch to forward all traffic to the box. Which is not what you want if you''re trying to build something scalable. Because at that point the box not only has to control the web server, but also has to do forwarding. And that setup would be horrible insecure. Your server would just be sitting there open to the internet. Whereas if you buy a cheap router, you can block ports selectively and only leave HTTP and a few other select ports open. You can still have your 2k machine doing terminal services and the like while behind the router.

I've been looking around at routers that would provide all that functionality as well as print service and stuff like that, but they all range in price around a couple hundred dollars up to 600 dollars, which is a little out of budget for me. Due to economic reasons, I'd much rather buy another NIC for the win2k box.

In this setup, the cable modem would plug into my win2k box and the win2k box would act as a router. The other network card would then plug into the switch, and the switch would service the rest of the network.

The services I'm thinking of running on my win2k box are:
ISA (for better security), proxy server, SMTP server, NAT, DHCP, DNS, FTP, HTTP, Terminal Services, and Print services.

Is this setup possible? What are your opinions on ISA? Maybe after my fledgling home company starts generating some cash flow I can switch to a router configuration?

Its definately possible. Its not an ideal setup, but just to run it like that for awhile would be alright. You might want to get ahold of one of the mod's his sig lists him as working on his Win2k certification. I'm sure he'd be able to help you more than i can.

Hi, I've been busy working on something for binarydreams, which you should hopefully see by the end of the weekend.

It's best to do one thing at a time to make sure everything works. Best thing to do, is decide how you want your physical network layout to be. I would go with a router that either handles printing or doesn't handle printing. For best performance, don't go with one. Go to [url]www.smc.com[/ur]. They have 8 port home/small office routers, that work great. (I have one).

Then, setup your DC, install Active Directory, create your user accounts. Then you can share your printers through the DC using AD.

Go with DSL or cable if you can. All you need from them is their modem, make sure it has CAT5 out, so it can plug into your router. And usually the router can get your ISP's DNS and gateway, etc. You don't need a static IP with a router that handles NAT.

As for your 24 port switch, you can setup your internet connection to come into your DC (you'd need 2 NICs). You could use RRAS (Routing and Remote Access) to share the connection. There are additional steps to secure your DC and internal network.

It's possible like Fenis-Wolf said, but if all of those services are going to be running on that machine and being used a lot, you either need a lot of RAM, CPU and HD space or maybe an extra server.

ISA is good, but hard to get going if you don't have a static IP. If your new to all of this, I would try RRAS for now.

Let us know what you decide and if you have any other questions.

I know that in the end, your plans are a lot more secure. However, since I am running a web service on a dynamically assigned ip by my isp, I need to have my domain name point to my computer even though I have a different ip.

The only way I can see to accomplish this is to use the services of http://www.dyndns.org They have global public dns servers that will host my domain name and point it to my ip. The ip will be auto notified to the dyndns servers by a client program that I can install as a service on my win2k machine. So my main concern in the router option is that I don't think I'll be able to provide this functionality.

Thanks for all your great input and advice! If you guys can offer me anymore about this dynamic ip situation, that would be great too!

dyndns.org is ok, www.no-ip.com is good too. I use them for my webserver (personal one) at home. Only set back is when your IP changes, it can take awhile for dyndns or no-ip to update their records.