LAN problem

[Guest]

Hello everyone
I'm seting up a small network with 15 PCs. My requestment is all the PCs be
in the same subnet for sharing printer and communicate with each other.
I'm using a DSL modem connect to a Linksys router, and then the router
conncet to 3 Dynex Ethernet Switch, each switch conncect to 5 PCs.
But there are only 6 PCs can connect to the MSHOME work group in the
LAN(these PCs can see all of the 15 PCs in the LAN in MSHOME workgroup), the
rest of PCs can not(When click on "View workgroup computers" a error message
show:
"\\client1 is not accessible. You might not have permission to use this
network resource. Contact the administrator of this server to find out if
you have access permissions. Access is denied."). All of these PCs are brand
new just order from DELL, and all of them can connect to the Internet.
How can I slove this problem?
Thank in advance.

 

[Guest]

There are number of well-documented causes for this sort of problem.
Favourite is probably a misconfigured firewall.

It also pays to remember that XP Home can only accept five inbound
connections (I'm assuming it's Home from the workgroup name)

Dells also come preinstalled with a great deal of foistware, some of which
can disrupt network connections.

The bottom-line is, though, that peer-group networking is only suitable for
very small clusters of machines. With fifteen machines you'll need to
troubleshoot and maintain two hundred and ten connections between computers.
With a server-centric arrangement you'd only need to maintain fifteen
connections, plus with the data in a mangeable central location you'd not
have the same worries over who is storing what where, is it being backed-up,
and whether it might be misappropriated.

 

[Guest]

Thanks, Ian!
so you suggestion is set up the network as server-centric arrangement.
Could you give me some detial info about how to set up a server-centric
network?
Will this 15 PCs still under a same subnet?
Thanks a lot!

 

[Evolution]

Here are some info links on Server/Client networking model.
http://compnetworking.about.com/cs/clientserver/index.htm