🚀 go-pugleaf

	Hi,

	I'm not an OS/2 user, but I've been put in charge of putting
	together an office at my university that has just bought 3 
	machines bundled with OS/2 on the hard drives.

	They have also said that they will be wanting to incorporate 
	file and printer sharing.  I suggested some form of Peer to Peer 
	network allowing them to access the same databases, etc, etc.

	Now it starts to get tricky.  One of the machines is to be used
	by an administrator (not in the office) whos involvement in that 
	office's daily business is negligable.  The odd print job to the 
	laser may occur but that is all.  (As of now she is sticking with 
	sneakernet.)  She has stated however that since the campus is going
	fiber optic (that is just about every building is being connected 
	to the back bone) she would like to have access to that if for 
	nothing else than for E-mail.

	One of the machines in the office will have the same requirements
	as the above machine as well as file and printer sharing.

	Now I figured that machine A and B would be connected to the
	backbone and be able to utilize telnet and ftp and whatever.
	This is good.  Also I thought that machines B and C would be
	connect as a peer to peer network and do their thing.  This is 
	also good.  

	What I want to know is...  Will machine B need two ethernet 
	cards?  Will there be a problem connecting it in this way?

	Upon further consideration, I thought that a hub off the backbone
	connecting all the machines and perhaps a print server or
	something to that effect may be better.  I started looking at
	prices and found that a 12 connector hub for 10base T ethernet
	(twisted pair) runs around $2300 dollars.  Even with university
	funding, it's a little out of their range.  This of course 
	would satisfy any expansion that may occur as well, providing
	it can be implimented in this way.

	Can anyone tell me if there is a better solution?
	Better = less expensive, more effective.
	Will the hub idea work?  I'm sure some arrangement could be made
	to overcome the cost of the hub.  Renting or whatever.
	Is there a problem with OS/2 and networking of any form?
	Networking in this way?  Each machine will have it's own copy
	of OS/2.  All they need to share are X number of files and one
	printer so a client-server network is not really necessary.
	Not that they could afford a dedicated server anyway, but you 
	get the idea.

	You can E-mail me or post a reply.  I'm sure that others may
	find something of interest in it as well.  Flames?  Well, only
	if I screwed up on netiquette.

	PS. In case you were wondering, my summer job is hardware and
	software support at the university computer lab.

Spiff
    _l\l\l\      01calvin@ac.dal.ca      "We are free to go where we
    Oc O   )     Vanguard@ac.dal.ca       wish and to be what we are."
     \_/  /      Goldrick@ug.cs.dal.ca   - Jonathan Livingston Seagull