Reasons for Networking

[Guest.Visitor]

I have been told I can use ethernet cards without being networked. What additional advantages does networking give?

[Guest.Visitor]

Bobbie, I think something got lost in your conversations with the other person(s). What may have been meant was that a server is not needed in order to network computers together. This is known as peer-to-peer networking. In a P2P network, users can share printers and files with each other and live harmoniously together. In a server environment, the files are "typically" stored on the server, and not necessarily on the clients. If there are more than 2 PC's in a network, then a hub or switch is necessary to allow the PC's to talk to each other (there are exceptions to this depending upon the connection methods used, but this holds true for the typical 10 base T wiring method). Does this help? Bill

[Guest.Visitor]

So if attach pcs to As400 using ethernet with star topology, can access each other's printer, scanner, and files? But still have to update opearating system and other programs on each pc? As I understanding correctly? Bobbie

[Guest.Visitor]

Bobbie, Yeah, I think you got it. In a Peer-to-peer network, think of each PC as an extension of each other PC. Each PC is the "boss" over its own resources (disks and printers). You really have almost all of the benefits of a typical server based network except for the enhanced security and enhanced resource sharing capabilities. Bill