Win2003 - Network Setup

[gamerland]

Good day,
I am helping a friend setup a server for his office (MD) and the menus/options in 2003 for Networking are proving difficult.

He has a Linksys router that assigns an IP. The server however needs a fixed IP (or maybe not - see below).

The router controls the connection to the internet so traffic needs to flow through it. When I change 2003 to get an IP dynamically it works fine. When I set a static IP, no internet access, and the server cannot see or be seen by the desktops in his office. Also, I mucked something up, because I could connect to it via remote desktop, but no more.

According to the server manager, the server is currently setup as a file server only. What I need is:
[ul][li] to be able to point their desktop software to a directory [tt]\\server1\mddir\[/tt] [/li]
[li]to have the server access the internet (for patches, etc.)[/li]
[li]to have remote desktop accessibility from within the office[/li]
[li]to ensure no one on the internet can send anything to the server[/li][/ul]

I would be greatful for any suggestions, links, etc. While Active directory can be installed, it is such virgin territory for me, I would like to avoid it.

 

[richiep]

The Linksys router should be able to have 2 IP addresses. One for the external IP & one for internal IP. Ideally it should also use NAT & have a firewall.

You can then set the internal lan of the router to be the default gateway for all machines. If you do not want to use AD then configure the clients/server to use an external DNS for name resolution.

This way you only need to worry about configure internal IP's which you can set up the 2003 server as a DHCP server.