Domain network

[Ken']

Hi
Can someone please explain to me what is a "domain" network and how is it
different that say a simple home network of 3 or more computers?
Thanks
Ken'

 

[Ron Lowe]

Hi
Can someone please explain to me what is a "domain" network and how is it
different that say a simple home network of 3 or more computers?
Thanks
Ken'

In a workgroup, each machine which has shares to offer ("server" ) can only
grant access permissions to users defined on that machine.

So if you have a network of say 20 client machines and 5 servers, you'd need
to manually maintain the same user acounts on all 5 servers, and on all 20
client machines.

Administrative nightmare.

A Domain essentially allows one machine to contain a centralised database of
user accounts which all the machines can reference.

That's the basic deal.
But there's more.

Once you have a domain, there are lots of things you can do more easily.
You can have much greater admin control of the machines via Group Policy
etc;
You can set up secure wireless access easily with IAS etc etc.

 

[Marc Reynolds [MSFT]]

Hi Ken,

Here is an old but still accurate article that explains:

101957 Domains, Domain Controllers, and Workstations
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=101957


Thanks,
Marc Reynolds
Microsoft Technical Support

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