Network Know-How

Clients and Servers

As your network grows, you might choose to add some computers and other devices (such as printers) to the network. Those additional computers will provide useful resources to all of the network's users.

In a network, a client is a computer or program that uses resources supplied by another device; a server is the device that provides those resources. Organizing a network into clients and servers is one way to make that network much more flexible and powerful than the individual computers connected to it. As you plan a new network or expand the one you already have, you should think about each network activity as either a client program that runs on local computers or a server that supplies the program from a central source. ...