Is Mac OS X Server necessary in this situation?

Question

My company is doing a trade show circuit. In our trade show booth, we will have 40 computers, which will allow people to signup for a service using a simple web form (submitted data stored in a MySQL database). Because of the exorbitant fees the shows charge for each computer connected to the internet, we want to put the signup form on a machine set up as a web server on the local network in the booth (so we don’t have to pay to connect all 40 machines to the internet).
We want the machine that hosts the signup form to be as portable as possible. An Apple laptop would be ideal. Obviously, the resource demands of a simple web form are very minimal, but I’m worried about the concurrent connections limitations.
Can I get by with the regular OS X operating system that will come with the laptop, or do I need to upgrade to the unlimited OS X Server license to make sure that 40 computers can hit the web form at the same time (this wouldn’t likely happen, but I’m preparing for the worst case scenario)?

Answer 1

Not necessarily Mac OS X Server. Pretty much, all you need is a gateway to the internet that uses NAT.
You could use a wireless router (secured, of course) to route the wireless clients out to 1 internet connection.
You could use a wired router, with switches enough for all your clients.
In either case, you would configure them to use Network Address Translation, configure your clients with a private IP block (i.e. 10.0.0.0/27 or 192.168.0.0) and your router with a private IP on the inside and, most likely, dhcp on the outside.
For example, you could configure your router to serve DHCP to your clients in the net range 192.168.1.10 - 192.168.1.100, set your router's internal address to 192.168.1.1. The outside interface information would need to be provided by the facility whose net connection you are using, but it will most likely be DHCP. This way, you pay for only 1 internet connection.
Chris