7.1. What Order to do Things

For efficiency, we recommend you configure your desktop computers in the following order:

Step 1: First, configure one of your desktop computers to work with TCP/IP (using the information in this chapter).

Step 2: With TCP/IP up and running on one of your computers, you can now access the server manager over the web and create your employees' user accounts. The next chapter, Chapter 8.On-going Administration Using the server manager, explains this simple process.

Step 3: Once e-mail accounts are created, you can ensure that all the computers on your network are configured for TCP/IP, e-mail, web browsing and LDAP (using the information in this chapter).

This chapter helps you configure software and hardware supplied by other companies and for that reason is not as specific as the rest of this guide. Given the wide range of computers, operating systems and software applications, we cannot accurately explain the process of configuring each of them. If your computers and applications came with manuals, they might be useful supplements to this chapter. Technical problems encountered in networking your desktop computers and applications are best resolved with the vendors who support them for you.