Hi! I'm involved in a UK-based youth group that has just received a government (lottery) grant for about £3000-£4000 to buy a few computers. We've decided to get 3 PCs (probably from Dell) running Windows XP. I'm the guy with the most technical know-how among the organisers and although I'm technically very competent I've had no practical experience in networking. I'd be happy with two of the PCs linked peer-to-peer by USB - or something as simple as that leaving the third stand-alone, but the guy in charge wants them *all* networked. I want to know the best way to network these three computers. The network is unlikely to grow and I suspect if the guy buying these machines just calls up Dell and orders 3 networked computers they'll give him a server and two pcs ethernet-ed up which I think is overkill. I want to avoid buying a server as this will chew up part of the limited budget and render one computer out of the running. So I need a peer-to-peer network for 3 active computers. It also can't be too expensive or much to complicated to set up. Would a token ring network be ideal? Is this easy to set up under Windows XP? How much should it cost? What are the known gotchas? How fast will it go (faster than 100Mbit ethernet?) Is there such thing as a serverless ethernet network? thanks for your time, Merlin

FORGET TOKEN RING!!!! Cheapest thing to do is an ethernet nic in each computer. Connect by cat5 cable to a hub. Enable file and print sharing.

For a small network, just get 3 Network Interface Cards (NICs) and a hub. You will be able to set up a peer to peer network (workgroup) without a server (domain/workgroup). How to set it up, depends on what OS you get on your machines. There are many sites on the www that can step you through a setup. Some site are listed in various posts in these forums (try the network forum). Stay away from XP Home version if you want to network simply. I'd stay away from Token ring for simplicity and stick with TCP/IP ethernet (10/100 Mhz UTP). You don't need Gigabit (1000 Mhz) ethernet for a small network, you probably won't even saturated a 10 Mhz connection. If you're going to have a cable/dsl internet connection, replace the hub with a suitable 4 port router that handles cable/dsl connections (Linksys, dLink and Netgear have the various flavours). Wireless would be a more expensive choice.

thanks for your replies i didn't realise it was possible to network using ethernet without a server. does each computer get it's own cable to the hub? how mucxh will the cables and hub cost me? will all the machines need winXP professional? will winXP work out the topology for me and thus it'll be easy to set up using a wizard etc? merlin

linksys network in abox includes one hub and two network cards for around 75 us dollars nic cards range form 10 to 50 dollars cable is cheap You can setup a peer to peer using usb for all three if you had enough usb ports but you cant do it with normal usb you would have to use something like genlink (can by at radio shack usb cable with a big bulge in center) and sets up just like a full network for both cable would cost 100 us dollars and is easier and more portable but slower that a conventional ethernet network

ps you can use any conventionaly cable such as serial or printer cable but you need sufficiant ports and they typically are only one way communication (what do you need the network for if you only need one way and small files printer cable is perfect)

Just in case you aren't aware of it . All OSs since Win95 have built in peer to peer networking.