Hi! I'm involved in a UK-based youth group that has just received a government (lottery) grant for about £3000-£4000 to buy a few computers. We've decided to get 3 PCs (probably from Dell) running Windows XP.
I'm the guy with the most technical know-how among the organisers and although I'm technically very competent I've had no practical experience in networking.

I'd be happy with two of the PCs linked peer-to-peer by USB - or something as simple as that leaving the third stand-alone, but the guy in charge wants them *all* networked.

The network is unlikely to grow and I suspect if the guy buying these machines just calls up Dell and orders 3 networked computers they'll give him a server and two pcs ethernet-ed up which I think is overkill.

I want to avoid buying a server as this will chew up part of the limited budget and render one computer out of the running.

So, I want to know the best way to network 3 active computers perr-to-peer. It also can't be too expensive or much to complicated to set up.

Would a token ring network be ideal? Is this easy to set up under Windows XP? How much should it cost? What are the known gotchas? How fast will it go (faster than 100Mbit ethernet?)

Is there such thing as a serverless ethernet network?

thanks for your time,
Merlin

First, if you wish to avoid major hassles in the future, find a good local computer store and have custom built machines. I work with brand names all the time and simply hate those proprietary POS's.

Second, don't bother with token ring. You can get much higher bandwidth from 10baseT (cat5) What you need is a small hub (4 to 8 port should do) 3 NIC's (one for each PC) and 3 cables.

A "serverless" network is referred to as a workgroup. The most basic kind of network where all computers can share and access shared resources. It's a very simple setup and token ring is not something you need for this small setup.

he's right, you know. Three peecees, a small hub/switch and three bits of cat5 straight through cable. WinXP, a glass of guinness and a long smoke.

Not forgetting the neccessary network cards for each peecee. (10/100)