Options for small windows network setup without dedicated server?
- by Mitch
I'm very weak on networking and hope someone can point me in the right direction:
I have written some windows client/server software which incorporates a database which is located on a windows server. I have a test installation running at a customer's office where the server has a static IP address. In this case its easy for the clients to access the database because of the fixed IP address. Also, customers with network servers generally have specialist support staff to set up my software, so its not such a problem for me.
However I also need to offer the software to customers who have small offices with less than 10 PCs and no dedicated network server. In this case I want the customer to be able to nominate one PC as the database "server" and install my software and have the clients access it. But in this situation I believe the "server" PC may not have a dedicated IP address.
Q1: What is the best way to set this up simply and make it work? Can I reliably reference the "server" by using its name, or is there a way to assign dummy fixed IP addresses? Ideally this needs to be workable on small networks running a mixture of XP/Vista/Windows7 as my target market may well have mixed OSes etc. I guess this would be akin to home networking?
Many thanks
Mitch
