Roy J. Tellason wrote in a message to Mike Bilow:
 MB> Go for "combo" cards which can use either coax or 10Base-T 
 MB> cable.  You can save the cost of a concentrator by using coax 
 MB> for a small home network.
 RJT> Would I want to move to twisted-pair at some point later on?
 RJT> When?  Why? 
Twisted-pair is a lot easier to wire for more than a few stations.  With 
coax, you have to thread the coax through each station, regardless of whether 
to physical relationships between the stations makes this easy or not.  With 
twisted-pair, you have a run of cable between each station and a central 
concentrator in a star topology, and this is much easier to wire.  The 
downside to twisted-pair is the cost of a concentrator box, about $100.
 MB> OS/2 Warp Connect comes with IPX/SPX, TCP/IP, and SMB/NetBIOS 
 MB> networking in the box. 
 RJT> I'm not real clear on what these are.
These are the "big three" networking protocols.  IPX/SPX is the home of 
Novell NetWare, TCP/IP is the home of Unix and the Internet, and SMB/NetBIOS 
is the home of Microsoft and IBM networking.  Today, many systems can speak 
more than their "native" protocol.
There are also technical differences.  NetBIOS is very simple, but it cannot 
be routed and is therefore unsuitable for wide area networks.  IPX has 
inefficient dynamic routing, so it gets very expensive on wide area networks 
unless advanced techniques are used.  IP has proven itself on wide area 
networks, but involves substantial administrative overhead.
 MB> OS/2 Peer Services is also included 
 RJT> Or that.
OS/2 Peer is software that comes with OS/2 Warp Connect.  It is both a server 
that allows the OS/2 machine to publish its drives and printers for use by 
other network nodes, and a client that can use the resources published by 
other network nodes.
 MB> with OS/2 Warp Connect, and it allows operating as a peer 
 MB> server which is interoperable with other SMB/NetBIOS/NetBEUI
 RJT> Or these...
Since OS/2 Peer uses SMB/NetBIOS over NetBEUI, it is interoperable with 
Windows for Workgroups, Windows 95, and Windows NT.  It can also use 
SMB/NetBIOS over TCPBEUI.
 MB> Linux can use the Samba package for SMB networking, although 
 MB> the current version only supports SMB/NetBIOS over TCP/IP, 
 MB> commonly known as TCPBEUI. 
 RJT> Again,  I need to understand the terms you're tossing around
 RJT> here.  BTW,  when you mentioned the Samba package once in
 RJT> another echo some time back,  I thought that it would be
 RJT> interesting to pick it up and at least take a look at it, 
 RJT> but as many times as I've tried,  the only site I've been
 RJT> able to find that has it available for ftp doesn't seem to
 RJT> want to transfer it to me -- or there's some problem with
 RJT> the net in between.  Transfer seems to start,  stalls,  and
 RJT> it just sits there.  I can go read email,  newsgroups,  etc.
 RJT> for half an hour and it's still stuck at the same place when
 RJT> I go back and look at it again. 
Someone shipped this down the Fernwood pipe a few weeks ago, and I presume it 
is an OS/2 port of Samba (although that would seem pretty useless):
SAMBA193.ZIP  500K  5-02-96  This is version 1.9 of Samba, the free SMB (LAN
                             Manager-like) client and server
I picked up the distribution Unix version some time ago and posted it myself:
SAMBA190.TGZ  277K 12-16-95  (samba-1.9.00.tar.gz) File and print server for
                             SMB/NetBIOS/NetBEUI protocol encapsulated in
                             TCP/IP; allow Unix to interoperate with Windows
                             for Workgroups, OS/2 Peer, etc. (tar.gz format)
SAMBA190.ZIP  310K  1-22-95  (samba-1.9.00.tar.gz) File and print server for
                             SMB/NetBIOS/NetBEUI protocol encapsulated in
                             TCP/IP; allow Unix to interoperate with Windows
                             for Workgroups, OS/2 Peer, etc. (ZIP format)
Feel free to FReq (1:323/107) or download (+1 401 944 8498) these files here.
Samba should be widely available on the Internet.  The package is available 
via anonymous ftp from nimbus.anu.edu.au in the directory pub/tridge/samba/.  
It should also be mirrored at all good Linux sites, including 
sunsite.unc.edu. A Samba WWW site can be found at 
http://lake.canberra.edu.au/pub/samba/.
 MB> OS/2 Warp Connect supports this mode directly, but many 
 MB> incarnations of Windows will not.
 RJT> Hmm,  yet another factor to complicate things...   
If you are dealing with Windows for Workgroups or Windows 95, Samba will work 
well.  If you have regular (non-Workgroups) Windows 3.1, it can be an effort.
 MB> Assuming expense is a concern, 
 RJT> Always a valid assumption!
:-)
 MB> I recommend that you get NE-2000 clone Ethernet cards.  These 
 MB> are cheap and widely supported, although not very fast.  You 
 MB> should get "combo" cards so you can support either coax or 
 MB> 10Base-T cabling, and you should start by using coax until you 
 MB> have more than three or four nodes.  You should look at TCP/IP 
 MB> if Internet connectivity is your paramount concern, or at 
 MB> SMB/NetBIOS if DOS/Windows compatibility is more important.  
 RJT> Internet connectivity is only a concern in that it's
 RJT> something that I want to be able to do once the price comes
 RJT> down to the point where it's realistic for me as a
 RJT> non-commercial user can afford some sort of a full-time
 RJT> connection. While things seem to be moving in that
 RJT> direction,  albeit slowly,  I'm not exactly holding my
 RJT> breath waiting for that to become a reality...  
OS/2 Warp Connect will give you all of the options.
 
-- Mike
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