long-term competitive advantage. Networks can be used to share hardware, programs, and databases across the organization. They can transmit and receive information to improve organizational effectiveness and efficiency. They enable geographically separated workgroups to share documents and opinions, which fosters teamwork, innovative ideas, and new business strategies (Stair, Reynolds 269). Getting computers connected and speaking the same language may be somewhat interesting for some people, but it’s really just a necessary evil to get to the good stuff. In order to take advantage of your network, you need to configure network services, such as file, print, and application services.A server in a network is dedicated to performing specific task in support of other computers on the network. In a server-based network, not all servers are alike. Networks are about sharing three things: files, resources, and programs.File servers offer services that allow network users to share files. File services include storing, retrieving, and moving data. File and print servers do not do processing for client computers (Lammle 7).Print servers manage and control a single printer or a group of printers on a network. The print server controls the queue or spooler. Clients send print jobs James 3to the print server, and the print server uses the spooler to hold the job until the printer is ready (7).Application servers allow client PCs to access and use extra computing power and expensive software applications that reside on a shared computer. Application servers offload work from the client by running programs for the client and sending the results back to the client. For example, when a client asks a Microsoft SQL Server server to find a record, SQL Server does all the processing to find the answer, and then sends the results back to the client (7).File, print, and application services are the main services that servers provi...
