All about networking

[JustROLLIN]

OK, I guess thats the higher end I was talking about then. I was not certain about pricing on it, but that must be it. Still, an improvement from their middle level package. And yes, there is definitely a low end package. Comcast does not advertise it at all, but if you call them and speak to an operator, they will tell you about it only when questioned about it.

 

[asellus]

Yep, I believe for resi there's the 4 meg, 6 meg, and 8 meg. You can get them all 'a la carte' if you will, but good luck finding a sales person who will actually sell JUST that service to you...

 

[dmention7]

So, can someone walk me through the pros and cons of setting up a low-end PC as a file server versus simply going with, say, a pair of hard drives in a network-attached storage device?

At this point, I'm a little unsure of exactly what capabilities a file server would gain me (if it was to be used primarily as a media repository) and how I'd best configure a PC for such duties.

 

[DrWebster]

A proper file server can be configured to do more than just serve files...you can use it to share a printer, serve e-mail, host a Web site, etc. Most NAS devices do only file sharing, and don't have much by way of security options either.

 

[dmention7]

Well, I already use a print server, and have no need for email or web hosting... so in that case, would NAS and a file server be roughly equivalent? I mean, at work our computer guy was trying to sell us about $7k worth of server equipment, and I said screw it... give us a 1TB NAS device for $500, and that's been filling our needs perfectly.

 

[Picklz]

Yeah there are pro's and con's - NAS generally has a smaller footprint and sucks up less power, but not as feature-rich, and you can't do other things with it. If ALL you ever want to do is store files, aren't too worried about security / access rights then NAS might be alright.

Nice thing about using an actual PC is you could provide access to it over the web (via http or ftp) and you have some flexibility to do some other things with it (record & store TV for example).

 

[dmention7]

Well, how about this, then...

Since I am in the process of putting together a PC for the primary purpose of being a media center PC, would it be a good idea to have it serve double duty as a file server, or is that a job best left to an older rig that I can stash away in the basement, and that will have lower power consumption?

 

[Picklz]

If you were planning on having the Media Center box on all the time or anytime you'd want to access files (during the day, shut down at night for example) then that would be perfect.

And depending on what you are building for a media center box the difference in power draw might not be all that much, the disks are going to eat up power either way, and most modern machines clock themselves down to save power while not under load.

 

[AJ]

So are you guys talking about having one place for all application and datastorage, and just have the ability to print, and work out of the computer hooked up to it?

Cause that's what I want to do. Have one dedicated machine to be the host to all my software and have my laptop and desktop free of duplicate shit.

 

[Big Nate]

That is what I am looking for.

 

[asellus]

All your software...

All of your INSTALLED software? Or all your shit like movies and games? Either way you're almost better off with a terrabyte NAS if all you wanna do is have a fileserver.

 

[AJ]

Say I have dreamweaver, I want to install it in one spot and run it off any machine connected. I have 1 laptop (XP) and one desktop (XP).

 

[Picklz]

Cant really do that unless your using citrix or something like that maybe...at least as far as I know. Applications generally need to be installed locally.

 

[asellus]

With windows, you have a thing called the registry. That's stored locally. Unless you're running a fancy MS-only network, you'll have to have the registry always be local, and always be up to date with the current programs install.

For example, if you have a network-installed program, //server/program1/ let's say, and you installed it from PC1 running Windows, then PC1 has a registry entry (like 100-200 registry entries actually) pointing to //server/program1/modules/ and //server/program1/plugins/ and all that crap so when the program is run, it looks to the registry to see where it actually is on the hard drive. Some programs can rebuild the registry entries if they are damaged or simply not there. For example, let's say you have //server/steam/ but never installed steam on PC1. When you run //server/steam/steam.exe, Steam will see there are no registry entries, and fix that.

However, this is far from Ubuntu and therefore very off topic. Enough rambling from me.

 

[dmention7]

Yeah, generally you'd have to have software that's specifically designed to be run in a network environment like that, or else some fancy software that's designed for sharing applications across a network. Neither of which are really practical for home use.

Hmm, I wonder if you could just remote desktop into your "server" and run applications that way? Would that be anything even approaching practical? lol


(also, I'm moving the last few posts to the "All About Networking" thread)

 

[Picklz]

Thats an option Jay depending on the application, it's not quite as nice as having the app on your PC

I'm not quite sure what the issue is of having to install the app on the actual PC versus having it running on the server? File storage I understand but the reasoning for doing it with apps to is escaping me.

 

[AJ]

Ok, fuck the applications then, over the top for me. Data storage and networked printing and such, that's for this ubantu thing?

To give you guys an idea, I'm using 2 externals to keep my computer hard drives from filling up, I'm not far away from needing a 3rd, and I'd like to avoid the need.
I heart porn.

 

[Picklz]

Ubuntu is just a distro of Linux, another operating system. You could do file sharing, network printing, etc from windows too if you wanted. Each has pro's and con's

 

[AJ]

So is there anything out there that's "P&P" type shit that I could use as a mass storage unit and connect to multiple systems and print though with my 2 XP systems?

 

[dmention7]

Yup, you just need an old desktop with a couple of hard drives and a printer.

Otherwise, you could get a print server (puts your printer on your network, so it's accessible from any networked computer) and a Network-Attached Storage device. Basically a box that you put hard drives into, and it makes the data on the drives accessible from anywhere on your network, similar to having shared folders in windows.