HOW CAN CLIENT / SERVER NETWORK MODEL BE A CHANGE FOR YOU??

WHAT IS CLIENT / SERVER? 

In the client-server network model (which is sometimes called the client-server architecture or client-server topology), resources are managed by the network operating system through a centralized directory database.  The database can be managed by one or more servers, as long as they have the same network operating system.

In the midst of a WINDOWS SERVER  controls network access to a group of computers, this LOGICAL group is known as Windows DOMAIN.  The centralized directory database that keeps user account information & security for the entire group of computers is called AD (Active Directory). 

 Each user on the network has his/her own domain level account assigned by the network administrator and kept in Active Directory.   A user can sign on to the network from any computer on the network and get access to the resources that Active Directory allows. The process is managed by AD DS (Active Directory Domain Services). 

A computer makes a request from another is called the client. Clients on a client server network can run applications installed on the desktop and store their own data on local storage devices. 

Clients don’t share their resources directly with each other.  Instead, access is controlled by entries in the centralized domain database. A client computer accesses resources on another computer by way of the servers controlling this database. 

Servers that have an Network Operating System installed require more memory, processing power, and storage capacity than clients because servers are called on to handle heavy processing loads and requests from multiple clients. For example, a server might use a RAID (redundant array of independent disks) configuration of hard drives, so that if one hard drive fails, another hard drive automatically takes its place.

Although client-server networks are typically more complex in their design and maintenance than peer-to-peer networks, they offer many advantages over peer-to-peer networks, including: 

• User accounts and passwords to the network are assigned in one place. 
• Access to multiple shared resources (such as data files or printers) can be centrally granted to a single user or groups of users. 
• Problems on the network can be monitored, diagnosed, and often fixed from one location.

CLIENT / SERVER APPLICATIONS

The resources a network makes available to its users include applications and the data provided by these applications. Basically, these resources are usually referred to as network services. 

The computers on a network are able to communicate with each other via the protocols they have in common. The two primary protocols are TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) and IP (Internet Protocol), and the suite of all the protocols an Operating System uses for communication on a network is the TCP/IP suite of protocols. 

 A brief list of several popular client-server applications and their protocols used on networks and the Internet:

web service - A web server serves up web pages to clients. Many corporations have their own web servers, which are available privately on the corporate network. 

Other web servers are public, accessible from anywhere on the Internet. The primary protocol used by web servers and browsers (clients) is HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol). When HTTP is layered on top of an encryption protocol, such as SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) or TLS (Transport Layer Security), the result is HTTPS (HTTP Secure), which gives a secure transmission. 

The most popular web server application is Apache, which primarily runs on UNIX systems, and the second most popular is IIS (Internet Information Services), which is embedded in the Windows Server operating system.

FTP service - FTP is a client-server application that transfers files between two computers, and it primarily uses FTP (File Transfer Protocol). FTP does not provide encryption and is, therefore, not secure. Web browsers can be FTP clients, although dedicated FTP client applications, such as FileZilla, and CuteFTP by Globalscape, offer more features for file transfer than does a browser.

Telnet service—The Telnet protocol is used by the Telnet client-server command line application to allow an administrator or other user to “remote in” or control a computer remotely. Telnet is included in many operating systems, but transmissions in Telnet are not encrypted, which has caused Telnet to be largely replaced by other, more secure programs, such as the ssh command in the Linux operating system.