Hi  all tech GURUS !

I am new to the group and I have a problem to be solved 

I manage a small net work for a Non-Profit Wildlife Conservation organization in India. 

The over all pic about the net work 


Computers 
10 PCs  ( All athlon XP/Sempron/ XP 64 on Asus Boards) XP  prof  with SP2 as OS 
3 Note books  (  2 Acer  intel, 1 Amd Turion )
+ I file server on win 2000 server  ( Athlon XP 64  bit 2400  512  RAM, 80 GB X  4 HDDs  )

Net working 
DSL  on Dlink ADSL  Modem -502T  which is connected to  D link Switch  DES 10 16 D 
WRT 54 G wireless router  ( for the lap tops)


My Problems 
 
The Clients take almost a minute or even more when they try to login in the server.  " Applying local settings.............. " and  it takes a lot of time.

I have made the  users and given rights to their  own folders under  "INTER OFFICE" directory so that every body can access files and also others can drop files easily. As it is a small organization, The inter office folder is used by everybody and i gave full access to the folder to ALL useres.  This is the only net work resourse they use on the server. 

The other folder which are shared are only used by two people, these are the photo lib and the  web site materials, i have shared  these two folders with  a "$" in the end so that no body can see the  share over the network and the rights are only with two of us. 


Due to the dely in the login i have told them to login locally and then connect to  the inter office folder from the desk top ( Created a link on every desk top )  the user name and pass word is asked by the server and the log in. This takes only 10 sec and all are happy with the system. 


I need guidence on Setting up f folder permissions and also to reduce the login time to the server

Problem II 

As i mentioned earlier about the Wifi, it is a security problem. any body with a wifi  lap top can connect to my net work and use  the internet connection. I switch off the wifi router in the eveing and durig the day, i am forced to use it. I have disabled DHCP on the wifi router and  the DSL rotuer give  the DHCP to the clients. So any body can log in to my internet connection.  

How can i ensure proper security in the network without  installing any external software ? 



Above all,  all suggestions to improve the security, file sharing and the over all performace of my network is welcomed with a smile and i want to learn more by troble shooting my own network .( I started doing that  because, i had very bad/sad experiences with some technical support guys who just formatted an entire hard drive  full of photo graphs last year !... " Oh we thought it was the spare hard drive and  we wanted to back up your laptop data into that ........ was the answer ."



Regards

Jose











        The NOSPIN Group has added a new feature on our website,
           web based bulletinboard for questions and answers:
              Visit our sister website at http://nospin.com