One of my clients is running a small network setup as a workgroup. 3 Windows XP Stations 1 Windwos XP Wireless Laptop 1 WIndows 2000 Server They just move up to high speed internet access with dynamic IP's. Would it be beneficial to move them up to a domain and utalize DHCP? Why or why not? Thanks for your advice, -Mario-

Personally, unless there are a large number of machines joining and leaving the network regularly (or if it were a big network which it clearly isn't) I wouldn't bother with DHCP, but it also depends on how the internet connection is being shared. Having static IPs is good when you need to know who an IP address belongs to, and is probably more reliable to work 100% of the time than DHCP. However there are certain circumstances where one or more things on the network will want DHCP for everything to work. For example if (for some reason) the internet was plugged into one of the XP machines and shared using XP's ICS, DHCP will have to be enabled for the internet to work on the other machines. As for making a domain, I wouldn't bother on such a small LAN unless there is a despirate need for roaming profiles or other features of a domain. Setting up domains and profiles can be a real pain, so like DHCP i'd avoid it if i could on a network that small.