Questions about Networking - Need some good resources

Hi

I have very little experience with networking, but have a fairly good grasp of things when it comes to computers - I tend to understand things quite intuitively and am mainly self-taught. My ultimate goal for this venture is to acquire a couple of networking certifications, but in the meantime, I would like to become fairly proficient at networking. I'm working at a company right now as a web designer/programmer, and they've asked me if I can do some routine tech support as well.

Now I have absolutely no problem with local machine troubleshooting, but when it comes to the network, I'm not really sure what to do. Here's an overview of the network.

There are two internet connections - the primary one being ISP A, the secondary one being ISP B. ISP B is connected to a backup server, which is not connected to the network, but is hooked up to a 7port switch. ISP A is connected to the internet, using an 8-port switch to hook up to the rest of the computers.

Their file server runs Windows 2000 Server Edition, and uses Active Directory for user profiling and permissions.

So, I just have basically two questions....

1. For the internet sharing, is that handled by a switch? Should I just be able to admin everything to do with ports, port forwarding, conenction sharing, etc through the switch's HTTP interface?

2. Could you recommend any good books or web resources that teach network administration through Win2k Active Directory?

Thanks!
Also let me know if I'm missing some info - I don't really know what to look for but those seem to be the obvious things.

A switch cannot share out the Internet. Normally you would use a router to share the Internet to other computers on the network, where the connection to the ISP is connected to one port, and the other computers to a built-in switch. You could use a switch if your ISP gave you lots of external IP addresses, but a router is easier. Once you've got a router, this should be able to handle all the things like port forwarding etc.



I think LabMice.net is pretty good: http://labmice.techtarget.com/

Hi!

Thanks for the reply. About the switch though, that's how they currently have it set up (a switch connected to computers, and they each share the same external IP I believe). Could it be some kind of switch/router? The model is Dlink DSS-8+ at http://www.d-link.com/products/?pid=70 . It gives an internal IP to each computer on the network.

How does the internet connection sharing work with this? Is it configured through software on the server computer most likely?

Or is this switch able to function as a router as well?

Well, if that is the switch that you have, it definitely isn't a router. So I guess the Internet connection must be connected to the main Windows 2000 server which shares it across the network. This server will have an external Internet IP address as well as an internal one. It's probably also got DHCP installed, so that it can hand out internal Ip addresses to the other computers in the network.



If you're using a computer to share the Internet, you may have extra Internet sharing software installed to do this, or you may be using the built-in Internet Connection Sharing.



As far as I can tell, your switch is just a switch and not a router.

Ah - that makes a lot of sense. I was a little confused given the original description because I didn't think switches were able to share IPs like that.

Thanks so much!

No problem