Digital Router Interview Question:

Explain what is the difference between a Workgroup and a Domain?

Submitted by: Muhammad

A workgroup is a collection of systems each with their own rules and local user logins tied to that particular system. A Domain is a collection of systems with a centralized authentication server that tells them what the rules are. While workgroups work effectively in small numbers, once you pass a relatively low threshold (usually anything more than say 5 systems), it becomes increasingly difficult to manage permissions and sharing effectively. To put this another way, a workgroup is very similar to a P2P network- each member is its own island and chooses what it decides to share with the rest of the network. Domains on the other hand are much more like a standard client/server relationship- the individual members of the domain connect to a central server which handles the heavy lifting and standardization of sharing and access permissions.
Submitted by: Muhammad