Mac OS X Server is overkill though for a home network and not worth the money. Just get a dirt cheap PC and install Linux or FreeBSD on it.
There's a recipe for disaster, or, at the very least, a method for a novice spending countless hours tweaking an alien system to do something already built into a Mac. Linux and it's boast of simplicity for the uninitiated is a damned lie at least.
Don't need any of that stuff for what he wants to do. Look at his original question. Merely set the router to pass vnc to the mac.... at work type Menu>GO "vnc://IPADDRESSatHomeThere" and he has control.
It's the K.I.S.S. principal at it's finest.
"Studying Networking" can mean so many things, and I think that the two thoughts in the original post are not connected. "Controlling a Mac remotely" and "Network Studies" really have little in common.
HOWEVER, if it's Apple Server he's interested in, that's another story, and it runs fine on a machine the specs say it can run on and then some. And Mr. AppleHockey, OS X Leopard server is very, VERY cool.