Domain or workgroup

Hi i am new to networking and have set up a peer to peer wireless home
network on 7 pc's using a work group name of mshome

can somebody please explain what the difference is between a work group
and a domain,

and should i have a domain instead of a workgroup what one is best and
for what reasons

thank you
--
Kevin


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Workgroups and domains explained
http://www.microsoft.com/hardware/br...s_domains.mspx

Shorter link:
http://makeashorterlink.com/?D5E921528


On Wed, 28 Apr 2004 00:08:50 +0100, in
<>
kev scrawled:

>Hi i am new to networking and have set up a peer to peer wireless home
>network on 7 pc's using a work group name of mshome
>
>can somebody please explain what the difference is between a work group
>and a domain,
>
>and should i have a domain instead of a workgroup what one is best and
>for what reasons
>
>thank you

--
Basic computer maintenance
http://uk.geocities.com/personel44/maintenance.html

kev wrote:

> Hi i am new to networking and have set up a peer to peer wireless home
> network on 7 pc's using a work group name of mshome
>
> can somebody please explain what the difference is between a work group
> and a domain,
>
> and should i have a domain instead of a workgroup what one is best and
> for what reasons
>

A domain is a collection of computers on a network that share a common
user
database and security policy. A domain is administered as a unit with
common
rules and procedures by the domain administrator.

A workgroup is a group of computers connected to each other over a
network and sharing computer files, printers, and other resources. All
computers on a network that wish to share resources must be members of
the same workgroup.

So what does this mean? If you set up your system as a domain, you
will need to allocate two machines to act as the primary and backup
domain controllers. They CAN be used for other things (like database
or fileserver) but using them as a normal user machine is a no-no.
Typically, you create one account per user on the domain, and that one
account is then valid on every machine on the domain and gives the
same user's settings - so a user can use any machine as if it was
their own. If the users changes their password, the password changes
for the whole domain and for every machine for which the users are
authorised to have access.

In a workgroup, typically, users would have to go to each machine and
change their password. Changes to profiles would have to be repeated,
machine after machine.

So a workgroup becomes impractical for a large number of machines,
particularly where users don't have machines dedicated solely to them,
e.g. hot desk.

Whether you should use a domain or workgroup really depends on what
you use your network for. I do support some domains with as few as 4
machines but that is really an exception that proves that you can't
generalise by saying that 7 machines is too few to justify a domain.

Hope that helps!

kev wrote:
>
> and should i have a domain instead of a workgroup what one is best and
> for what reasons

Keep it setup as a workgroup.



--
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