Dedicated Servers and Peers

In some networks, a server computer is a server computer and nothing else. This server computer is dedicated solely to the 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. A network that relies on dedicated servers is sometimes called a client/server network.

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.

While you are walking the dog tomorrow morning, ponder these points concerning the difference between dedicated server networks and peer-to-peer networks:

• Peer-to-peer networking has been built in to all versions of Windows since Windows 95. Thus, 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) are not very efficient because these versions of Windows were not designed primarily to be network servers. If you are going to dedicate a computer to the task of being a full-time server, you should use a full-fledged network operating system, such as Windows Server 2003, instead.