small business networking

[obdurate]

Want to design a network for a small business. Have 8 Pentium 233MHZ based computers running MS Windows XP Pro. best way to configure thes 8 computers into a network. but, also would need best way to allow two computers running Novell Netware 3.12 to clients in the network. Looking to minimize the cost.

Thinking about purchasing a 14 port hub and cabling to configure the eight computes on XP Pro into a workgroup. They have TCP/IP on each so can use a statit IP address and asign an IP address and submask. Then install nwlink ipx/spx/netbios compatibal NWLink on the eight and configure them to use fram type 802.5 so that the netware clients can connect.

Can someone else suggest another method.

Thanks
obdurate

 

[majestrate]

There are a large number of ways to do this, however the easiest thing to do would be to stick with the Workgroup concept, but instead of running TCP/IP and NWLink on the Windows machines, why not run just NWLink? Unless you're going to be connecting out to the net, there's no reason you need to run both protocols. There's ways around that too, but they're not worth the time and effort, just to keep from running two protocols.