Dedicated Servers and Peers

In some networks, a server computer is a server computer and nothing else. It's dedicated to the sole task of providing shared resources, such as hard drives and printers, to be accessed by the network client computers. This type of server is a dedicated server because it can perform no other task than network services.

Some smaller networks take an alternative approach by enabling any computer on the network to function as both a client and a server. Thus, any computer can share its printers and hard drives with other computers on the network. And, while a computer is working as a server, you can still use that same computer for other functions, such as word processing. This type of network is a peer‐to‐peer network because all the computers are thought of as peers, or equals.