Help !! My company has ADSL line with 5 IPs that comes along with it. What my company want is this.. 1. To be able to setup a gateway (using win2k server) 2. To setup an internal server which acts as the domain controller. THe server is also installed with MS Exchange Server 2000 3. TO have web server machine for our corporate website. 4. TO have a portal server machine in the near future using a different IP address Question 1. Which one needs to be the Domain Controller? The gateway server or the internal server? Question 2. Since my ISP provided us with 5 IPs, how do i set those IP's to different servers (should i have extra web server in the future?). Does the gateway takes care of the 5 IPs or the domain controller? Question 3. Which server gets to have 2 NICs? The Domain Controller or the Gateway? Question 4. How on earth does the network diagram looks like? (if u guys can help send a network diagram that can really make me understand more.. pls help!!) sorry for these question guys.. i really am not a network guy here.. but i would love to learn and set it up for my company... anybody with some good advice?? thanx again.. ur help is greatly appreciated!!!! eye2kay

Start with some serious reading on Windows 2000 Active Directory integrated domains. You can find all the info you need on the aforementioned at Microsoft's web site. The first DC in your forest should be your internal server. The gateway server could be the same server if you want. One consideration in deciding whether to use the same server or not is network load on the server. If your internal server is going to be very busy then having a separate gateway server is a good idea. Regardless of which way you decide to go the gateway server should have dual NIC's. One for the internal network (LAN) and the other for the external network (Internet). The external NIC should get it's IP address from the ISP. The internal should have a statically assigned IP address that is in the same range that you are using in your LAN. When setting the gateway server up to act as the gateway you will want to set it up for RRAS and enable NAT. You won't really need 5 IP addresses from your ISP. One should be plenty. If in the future you decide you need a web server, that might be a case for a separate IP address. However, with the use of port forwarding, you could create a web server inside your forest.