Chapter 9: Establishing Network Shares and Accounts

Lesson 1: Creating Network Shares

Your task in this exercise is to designate shares in a peer-to-peer network configuration.

For this configuration, assume that the company to be networked is small, numbering 20 employees, only 10 of which have computers. These computers are running compatible operating systems. Employees include the managing director, three people in the Sales Department, two in the Accounting Department, two in the Product Design Department, and two in the Shipping Department. There are two laser printers available; one is connected directly to the managing director's computer, and the other is connected directly to the lead accountant's computer.

In this exercise you will:

• Designate which resources will be shared.
• Enable sharing on the appropriate computers.
• Share printers, disks, folders, and, if appropriate, files.

Configure all computers to share folders.

Configure the Managing Director's computer and the lead accountant's computer to share their printers with names MANAGE and ACCOUNT respectively.

Configure all computers except the Managing Director's to print to the ACCOUNT printer. The MANAGE printer will be used by the Managing Director, but will be available to others should the ACCOUNT printer fail.

Create one folder in each of the computers for exchanging files. Share each folder as PUBLIC.

Set sharing for the PUBLIC folder so that all users have full rights within the folder.

Users will be able to make files in their PUBLIC folders available to others, and will have the option of copying files to the other PUBLIC folders if that is more convenient.

Lesson 2: Establishing and Managing Network Accounts

For this exercise we will return to the same 20-employee company that was the subject of Exercise 9.1 in Lesson 1. Your job is to design user and group accounts for the 10-computer server-based network. To do this, you should determine what kinds of groups are appropriate to the company and its work. You will also need to establish a password policy and a personnel policy that takes into account what will happen when an employee departs from the company.

After you have established the account policies, create the appropriate user and group accounts and set whatever restrictions will be necessary for each of the groups. These should include the days and hours during which groups can log on to the network. Assign printing rights to the groups as needed and, finally, add the users to the appropriate groups.

Account policies—Create groups that correspond to the working methods of�the company. Set each user's account so that passwords must be changed every 30 days. Allow users to change their own passwords. If an employee leaves the company, all users should change their passwords, and the departed employee's account should be disabled or, better, deleted.

Accounts—Create an account for each user on the server. Create a group account on the server for the Managing Director, and one group each for the sales, accounting, design and shipping employees. Add the Managing Director to the DIRECTOR group. Add the three sales employees to the SALES group. Add the two accounting employees to the ACCOUNT group. Add the�two product designers to the DESIGN group. Add the two shipping department employees to the SHIPPING group.

Account restrictions—Restrictions must follow the working methods of the company. The Managing Director and the accountant may need access during the evening or very early morning, or weekends. Restrict their accounts accordingly. The other employees are likely to work regular hours. Their accounts can be restricted to whatever their workgroup agrees upon.

Printing—Configure all computers except the Managing Director's to print to the ACCOUNT printer. The MANAGE printer will be used by the Managing Director, but will be available to others should the ACCOUNT printer fail.

1. Two computers running the MS-DOS operating system can be connected and information can be shared. (Yes or No).

Yes

2. Connecting two computers with a communications cable is called _____________ - ____________ ____________________.

Direct-cable connection

3. Sharing on a peer-to-peer network takes place at the _____________ level.

folder

4. The first person to log on to a Windows NT network uses the ______________________ account.

administrator

5. The user account contains information that defines a user to the network's ___________________ system.

security

6. Most network account-management utilities offer an account _____________ feature with which an administrator can create a template user with certain characteristics and parameters that are common among multiple users.

copying

7. A Windows NT administrator can use a _____________ to configure and maintain a user's logon environment.

profile

8. Two key pieces of information that should be entered when creating a user account are account name and ___________________.

password

9. The ____________ account is for people who do not have a valid user account but need temporary access to the network.

Guest

10. An administrator can create a ______________ account in order to simplify administrative tasks when dealing with a large numbers of users.

group

11. A global group is used across an entire ________________.

domain

12. Groups are used to give users ______________ to perform system tasks such as backing up and restoring files.

rights

13. The network administrator assigns ____________________ to groups to access resources, such as files, directories, and printers.

permissions

14. After being deleted, a user can no longer use the network, because the network __________________ database will contain record or description of the user.

security