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Setting up an Intranet Using NT4 and Microsoft Internet Information
Server
Using NT4
The school license cost for NT4 is approximately $170. Add to this a 'client' fee of around $10 for each machine on the network and the prospect of setting up an NT4 server becomes viable. The machine itself can be used as a secure repository for student work, avoiding the need for 'zip' drives, etc. It can also be used to control user access to specialist printers such as colour printers and lasers.
NT4 management does require a little more knowledge than Win95/98, but not a great deal more to use it at this level.
The arrangement described in these notes is based on a peer-to-peer network using Wingate as the internet 'router'. An NT4 server is part of the network and effectively acts as another 'peer' (rather than a 'server' in the true sense).
STEP 1 Set up Microsoft Internet Information
Server on the NT4 server
MyComputer
Control Panel
Network Icon
Services tab
Add button
(Insert the NT4 installation CD)
Select Microsoft Information Server from the list and follow the installation procedure.
NOTE: In the example used in this document, only the WWW server was installed. In most cases there is no need to install the Gopher and FTP server as well.
STEP 2 Open the Internet Service Manager (Start/Programs/Microsoft Internet Server (Common))
STEP 3 Double click the name of the WWW
server (in this example the server is called "room15")
STEP 4 Click on the Directories tab.
Change the Default Document to the name of your Home Page. In this example, the home page
is: index.htm (NOTE: You could leave the Home page set to "default.htm"
if you wanted to. You would then need to change the intranet URL accordingly from:
"http://room15/index.htm" to "http://room15/default.htm".)
STEP 5 Create all your Intranet pages linked from the Home Page (index.htm) and place them in: C:\InetPub\wwwroot
Setting up the Browser on the Client Machines
The Locator address for your Intranet Home Page is: http://NTServerName/index.htm
In this example it is: http://room15/index.htm
If you are using a proxy server such as Wingate, your browser will automatically look to Wingate for all "http://" addresses. You may have to change the browser proxy setting to exclude your intranet addresses from proxy re-direction. (Otherwise the browser will try to find your NT server on your ISPs system.)
In Netscape go to the proxy settings and in the "No proxy for:" box
enter: NTServerName:80 In our example it would be: room15:80
Internet Explorer has a tick box saying: "Bypass proxy server for local (Intranet)
addresses" under View/Internet Options/Connection tab
Setting up a HOSTS file on the Client Systems.
When you launch your client browser it will search your intranet for the NT server. This may take from several seconds to a minute, or so, depending on how busy your network is. You can speed things up considerably by creating a "HOSTS" file in the C:\WINDOWS directory on EACH of the client systems containing information about the IP address and name of the NT Server. The form of the entry is:
<IP Address of NTServer> <TAB> <NTServerName> in our example it would be: 192.168.0.12 ...TAB... room15 (The phrase "...TAB..." of course means press the TAB key.)
That's it!
Launch your browser and give it a test.
Good Luck, Jim Fuller