Just wanting to understand what I'm doing. Always good to learn rather than simply being told :).
> MS client gets disabled if you disable TCP/IP. QoS can be disabled as well.
> The network monitors can be left on.
Because it is a netbios based service, which rides on tcp/ip?
> You are disabling TCP/IP on the public NIC. The LAN NIC will have its own IP
> address, the public one will not. As far as "safely connect" is concerned,
> it depends on what you mean by "safely".
Yes, the server has two NICs. I have one connected on the LAN side for server admin, etc, the other is connected to a hub which has the WAN connections coming into it, just before the firewall. I want to see what hits us before the firewall does anything with it. It helps a lot when trying to figure out various problems.
What do I mean by safely? Meaning that public cannot gain access to the server in some way. I mean, the setup bypasses the firewall so sure don't want someone being able to gain access into the lan somehow.