Designing a Network for a Small Company

Designing a Network for a Small Company Christopher J Watson Trident University

Designing a Network for a Small Company

The first things to think about when creating a network for a small company are budget, reliability, speed, maintenance, and growth. For a company it's important to realize what can and cannot be afforded. Tying into that, you have to have a network that is reliable. If not, the money saved in a cheap less thought out one will be lost in constant repairs and low productivity. Speed is also a concern because it's pointless to have a network if it's too slow for anyone to accomplish any work on it with a reasonable amount of time. Maintenance is also a vital key. Things will break eventually and changes will need to be made so a network has to be accommodating to those things. Lastly, and going hand in hand with the previous part with any successful business there is growth. Your network needs to be able to handle the load of its own inner workings, growing and changing without being a detriment to all of the other factors. In this paper I will use the example of a small business with four departments to design a network. To begin we will talk about the hardware needed because that will reason out how much we should spend. Let's assume the four departments are something like this Accounting with three computers, marketing also with three, management with four, and Sales with 15 because we really want to push the product out there. I would start with one main switch for the basic node between them all. I would put another switch in Sales because of the volume of people there. For the other three departments I can't justify having a switch for each. I would put one switch between them all and set up a wireless router in each department. If possible use 802.11n because it will last the longest and give the best results. As for frequencies 5GHz is more powerful, and 2.4GHz can generally get better distance so take that into consideration. They use 802.11 networking standards, which come in several flavors: 802.11a transmits at 5 GHz and can move up to 54 megabits of data per second. It also uses orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM), a more efficient coding technique that splits that

Designing a Network for a Small Company

radio signal into several sub-signals before they reach a receiver. This greatly reduces interference. 802.11b is the slowest and least expensive standard. For a while, its cost made it popular, but now it's becoming less common as faster standards become less expensive. 802.11b transmits in the 2.4 GHz frequency band of the radio spectrum. It can handle up to 11 megabits of data per second, and it uses complementary code keying (CCK) modulation to improve speeds. 802.11g transmits at 2.4 GHz like 802.11b, but it's a lot faster -- it can handle up to 54 megabits of data per second. 802.11g is faster because it uses the same OFDM coding as 802.11a. 802.11n is the newest standard that is widely available. This standard significantly improves speed and range. For instance, although 802.11g theoretically moves 54 megabits of data per second, it only achieves real-world speeds of about 24 megabits of data per second because of network congestion. 802.11n, however, reportedly can achieve speeds as high as 140 megabits per second. The standard is currently in draft form the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) plans to formally ratify 802.11n by the end of 2009. So now we have three switches, three wireless routers and all the wire that goes in between them. For the wires I would stay with cat 6 between the switches, and cat 5e from the switches to the lesser nodes (i.e. computers and routers). Cat 6 is by far the most superior cable but it costs slightly more than cat 5e which still holds similar power at shorter distances. On the note of wireless - One or two wireless routers might be able to be subtracted based on the quality of the router(s) bought and the distance between each of the three departments. Next would be a discussion about topology because that's where most of the reliability will come from other than the quality of the gear. From just the gear suggested, it looks like it will be a star bus topology. Each switch will be a node to the greater scheme that is the bus' backbone. In Sales from the switch the segments will branch out into a star going to each

Designing a Network for a Small Company

computer. At the switch that goes out to the other three departments it will branch out into a star with each segment headed to a WiFi router. If you wanted to go the extra mile a repetitive line could be added going from the last switch to the first switch to ensure a path if one part in the line breaks. Now let's start really justifying what we just created, the first factor is speed. A fully switched next work would be fast. Switches are faster and more efficient than hubs. Since the network is fully switched, save for the wireless portion, there will be a significant increase in speed from one that only uses hubs. A vital difference between a hub and a switch is that all the nodes connected to a hub share the bandwidth among themselves, while a device connected to a switch port has the full bandwidth all to itself. For example, if 10 nodes are communicating using a hub on a 10-Mbps network, then each node may only get a portion of the 10 Mbps if other nodes on the hub want to communicate as well. But with a switch, each node could possibly communicate at the full 10 Mbps. Think about our road analogy. If all of the traffic is coming to a common intersection, then each car it has to share that intersection with every other car. But a cloverleaf allows all of the traffic to continue at full speed from one road to the next.. Fully switched networks employ either twisted-pair or fiber-optic cabling, both of which use separate conductors for sending and receiving data. In this type of environment, Ethernet nodes can forgo the collision detection process and transmit at will, since they are the only potential devices that can access the medium. In other words, traffic flowing in each direction has a lane to itself. This allows nodes to transmit to the switch as the switch transmits to them -it's a collision-free environment. Transmitting in both directions can effectively double the

Designing a Network for a Small Company

apparent speed of the network when two nodes are exchanging information. If the speed of the network is 10 Mbps, then each node can transmit simultaneously at 10 Mbps. Next is maintenance, which should not be bad at all. With only 4-6 main devices to traffic all the information flying around your office isolating the problem would be easy. Starting at the lowest level where things don't work, trace it back up, and there aren't many places where things can go wrong. The most likely place for problem would be the wireless routers. They have a slight bit more to them configuration wise because instead of hardware only there are lots of little software side corks to them. On the reverse, the benefits to having them be wireless for smaller groups outweighs the bad. There are no cables to worry about, so no tracing them to see if there are any breaks or frays. No extra cost is needed for a couple extra devices being added on. There is only one central hub to manage everything. The reason this wasn't chosen for everything is because it is hard to maintain a fast and efficient wireless network as the scale gets larger. The gear becomes significantly more expensive and in the end with too many users it bogs down quickly. The last and one of the more vital questions, how does this give the network the ability to grow? Starting with switches was the real key. Switches let speed be maintained even if later hubs have to be put in for an increase in network size. The wireless routers were a start and will scale up well until those sections expand to 10+ people (can vary depending on the quality of the routers that were bought). The topology even allows for more departments to be added. This should be a good starting place for any network a small business wants to implement. If a better piece of equipment can be bought for a reasonable amount more it should be gotten. Technology advances quickly and buying the cheapest gear will only be a regret later.

Designing a Network for a Small Company

References

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2001. HowStuffWorks.com. <http://computer.howstuffworks.com/wirelessnetwork.htm> 25 January 2012.

3. Mitchell, Bradley. "Topologies - Network Topologies - Types of Topology Examples -

Bus Ring Star." Networking - Computer and Wireless Networking Basics - Home Networks Tutorials. Discovery Communications. Web. 25 Jan. 2012. <http://compnetworking.about.com/od/networkdesign/a/topologies.htm>

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Network, Wireless Network and Computer Networking Made Easy. Web. 25 Jan. 2012. <http://www.home-network-help.com/>

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2004. HowStuffWorks.com. <http://www.howstuffworks.com/wimax.htm> 25 January 2012.

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"Internetworking Technology Handbook." DocWiki. Cisco, 13 Jan. 2012. Web. 25 Jan. 2012. <http://docwiki.cisco.com/wiki/Internetworking_Technology_Handbook>