First of all, we now have four PC's permanently in the house, and sometimes a fifth, my laptop, also gets connected. Because we need to share files and a printer, a network is called for. This also allows us to share the Internet. In the basement of the house is a patch panel, where all wires, configured in a star network, come together. Together that gives me space for 8 Ethernet connections.
Lets discuss the server.
It doesn't have a monitor, mouse, sound card or whatever. It runs a free variant of Unix, Mandrake Linux version 6.0. Doing all this hardly stresses the Linux machine. Setting up this Linux machine is not quite that easy. How-To guides from the Linux documentation pages to do so.