Domains vs. Workgroups

[nick]

WHy would an organization want a domain, and a workgroup? If separation
for the sake of security is an issue isn't just better to subnet?

 

[Kurt]

I don't know why an organization would want both. You'd have to check with
the admins there to find their reasoning behind it. It could be, as you say,
that temp workers and such are not domain members and specific permissions
are allocated to the local accounts on the workgroup computers. This would
be more for convenience than for security. Subnets - if you have routes
between - doesn't buy much security. The domain secuity model is way to go.
It can be as tight or loose as an organization requires, manages access to
all resources and offers complete centralized management of user and
computer accounts. Nothing else out there comes close to the functionality.

....kurt

 

[nick]

No one really know why. I'm the admin. now. Before me they had a
networking company, but they aren't that great giving out information.
I thought domains were the best, but here's a workgroup. Maybe I should
just have them join the domain, and separate computers by role.

 

[Kurt]

You could try joining one computer to the domain and see if any issues
arise. I recently ran into a situation where laptops joined to a domain
would get the error message that the copy of Windows was not genuine. This
is ridiculous, they are namebrand laptops, right out of the box, ordered
special with XP Pro pre-installed. When they are unjoined form the domain,
the problem disappears. Since these are used as wireless thin clients, the
quick fix was to leave them as no domain member laptops. You may have some
weird issue like that. Anyway, can't hurt to try.

....kurt