>>Hi Ed,
>>
>
>The principle arguments in favor of TCP/IP and IPX/SPX are that the two protocols are routable; they can be carried across multiple LAN segments and routed to their destinations. NetBEUI is a broadcast-based protocol; it is designed to operate over a single segment, and not to be passed across a router, brouter or gateway to a different segment. It is as noted, a bit chatty (the stations under NetBEUI broadcast pckets to make themselves known, making it easy to identify NetBEUI participants with relatively little overhead. With a large number of stations, it generates a significant amount of traffic; you've got three nodes. Packets are small and have relatively little overhead in each packet, since routing and forwarding isn't an issue - it's nice and fast in small LAN environments. It's a simple stack, which imposes relatively little load on each PC as well - with either IP and NBT or IPX/SPX and NetBIOS over IPX, there are multiple software layers involved in processing each
>packet. There is no need for WINS resolution (the translation of NetBIOS names to IP addresses, the biggest issue for implementing NBT without an NT box to provide WINS services) since all stations use their NetBIOS name as their station identifier in packets.
>

My suggestion to skip NetBEUI had more to do with the fact that I've run across a couple of database applications (file based, not client-server) that had a huge number of problems running under NetBEUI. TCP/IP fixed all of them. I do agree, NetBEUI is the easiest to set-up and maintain (if it works for you). I'd just hate to see someone find out that in their case, NetBEUI is corrupting their data.

-Paul