The server is XP pro which will only allow 10 connections at a time and that is where I run into the brick wall.
Network Attached storage (NAS) appliances like the Netgear ReadyNAS and the snap servers don't have this limitation. Your bottleneck would be the network or the AC database itself so Wendell's suggestion to have a gigabit router with associated network cards in each PC is very good advice.
Quoting from the Netgear website FAQ,
netgear website quote link "There is a limit of 32,000 users and 32,000 groups, however, depending on application, the ReadyNAS will support from 1 to 20 concurrent users. For large video files, the ReadyNAS can stream 4 HD-quality video without frame drops. For Microsoft Office-type applications, the ReadyNAS will handle many more concurrent users."
you can translate this as the bottleneck is really the network connection and the disk transfer rates rather than the appliance OS itself.
