Networking

[George]

I plan on opening a small one or two man repair shop out of my home to service computers and installing small networks for ten pc's or less. I would like to hear from technicians who are in this field as too what network operating system seems to work the best as far as stability and flexibility. The second hand info that i have received is that Novell netware and Linux to be the most used and windows nt or 2000 is the most unstable of the lot. I realize that Linux and Novell are command line interpreters but the people who are on that network as far as i know do not deal with the commands on the network operating sys.

Thanks

georgev@surglobal.net

[HAL9000]

I have approximately 20 NT servers and a couple Win2K servers on small networks ranging from 6 to 25 machines and don't run into any stability problems at all. The only time the servers are shut down or rebooted are when they need to apply updates to their software, other than that, it's 24/7.

[mhayes]

In all honesty all of the platforms you mention are quite stable. It all depends on what your client's needs might be. I've administered both NT and Novell environments and in both places they have been woven together to compliment each other. We currently have 16 NT servers and 17 Novell servers and as Hal stated we run ours 24/7 and very stable.

It is true that Novell has the larger client base but NT is the fastest growing. In any case, whatever you choose to offer your clients just make sure you can comfortably support them.