We are not using a proper server and all the connections are wireless. I'd like to give everyone seperate folders to store their files and have a shared folder for office bulletins etc.
Also is it possible to use remote desktop without a fixed IP or web server just over an adsl connection? You must set up all the computers for networking (see first link below). Basically, they all must be in the same workgroup.
On the secretary's computer, you must create a shared folder (try calling it 'shared') and individual folders for each login. I recommend creating a folder called 'home', then creating a separate folder in 'home' for each employee, using a unique name for each employee folder.
You must set up individual login accounts for each employee on the secretary's computer. I recommend using the same names you used for creating the 'home' folders. See the second link.
You must set permissions for the 'shared' and 'home' folders you created. See the second link.
On each employee computer, map the same drive letter to the specific employee 'home' folder on the secretary's computer (let's say P for personal) and the same drive letter to the 'shared' directory (let's say S for shared).
A couple of warnings:
--With wireless ethernet, the wireless spectrum is shared by all the computers, with only one computer able to send at a time. Do not be surprised by lousy overall performance as your users read and write more files to your secretary's computer.
--Your secretary's computer likely has a single hard drive with a single partition. Simple file-sharing does not limit how much space any user can consume. The first idiot who rips movies or music CD raw disk images, then dumps them on your secretary's computer may eat up all the available disk space. Your secretary's computer may become very slow or start crashing when it runs out of disk space. You may consider purchasing a separate hard drive such as a USB-attached external drive to host the 'home' and 'shared' directories.
--You are now making your secretary's computer very vital to your company and a single point of failure. This may be quite ironic if your secretary has the crappiest computer in the company, you spend no time training your secretary to understand the new role her computer is performing (to keep her from deleting unknown files when her computer runs out of disk space), and you spend no effort to back up critical employee files in 'home' directories and the 'shared' directory to some other media, such as burning a CD, backing up to tape, or contracting with an on-line backup service.
I assume your next question is 'can I use remote desktop without a fixed IP from my internet service provider?' Yes, but a person out on the internet must know what dynamic IP your small-office router is using at the moment. Your small-office router also must forward the remote desktop service ports (TCP port 3389, I believe) to the specific PC that is expecting a remote connection. That's a problem if you have multiple computers being supported remotely.
Some commercial services like http://www.gotomypc.com get around that problem by having your office computers (which I assume you wish to be supported remotely) to login to http://www.gotomypc.com. The person providing remote support also logs into http://www.gotomypc.com and finds your computers by name (not IP) and connects through the existing connection. This also gets around the problem of your office computers having dynamic IP's from your small-office router.
Finally, I assume your last question is "can I run a web server over an adsl connection?" Yes, as long as your ISP is not blocking http (TCP port 80) from the internet to your dynamically assigned IP. Some ISP's terms specifically forbid hosting a web server. If TCP port 80 is blocked, you may be able to work around it by using an odd port (say 81, 82, or another unassigned port), and having your small-office router forward that traffic to a specific IP in your internal office network, and also translate the destination port back to 80. |
