I have asked to help setup a wide area network and I need some guidance.

This client has 3 offices in one town and a further 3 in a town roughly about 450kms away. The 3 offices in the first town are approx 10/15kms apart and the other three are approx 15 to 50kms apart in the other town.

Whats the most optimum way of getting these offices to "see" and "speak" to one another?

All help appreciated.

Thanks


Chris

Once the computers are in separate buildings, it does not matter how far apart they are, you just need to find ways to interconnect them. The question is, do you want to do it cheap, or you want to be able to sleep at night. The most secure way to interconnect your network is to obtain dedicated leased lines (such as T1 or vitrual private network lines) from carriors such as the phone company. But, this is going to cost monthly lease fees which could be substantial. You can also make the tie via dial-up connections if there is going to be very very very little need to talk from one building to another. But, as you know, dial up is very very very slow. The only good thing about that is dial up connetion is a cheap solution. You just have to get a phone number for each end and pay the monthly fee for that nmber. VPN on the other hand could be much faster. The faster you want, the more you pay. But you get dedicated virtual connection through the provider's network. I believe leasing VPN is going to be much cheaper than other kinds of dedicated lines, such as T1. You can use ADSL. But you have to go thru internet for that. There are also WIFI type microwave radios that you can purchase and install between your buildings if there are line-of-site between these buildings. In your case, it does not appear this is a good choice. This would require regular maintenace which could be costly also. You can do a hybrid set up which means different connection for different building. Use dial up for where traffic is very low. Use T1 or VPN for where traffic is going to be heavy. The cheapest way is to do it through internet. The problem is that your connections are through internet and that makes it more prone to hacking. My advise is do a lot of time in planning and if you can do not cut corners. I heard of this program that allows you create VPN through internet. I have not used it myself. Take a look at it and see if this program or a similar one is something that might be of interest to you. Looks like you are on your way to have a lot of fun.

http://www.hamachi.cc/

Most small businesses in the UK (i.e. those with just 2 or 3 branch offices) are connecting over ADSL which, as Joeofeg says, is fast and cheap. It varies in the UK from between 0.5Mbps to 8Mbps. Bear in mind, though, that that is for DOWNLOAD speeds. ADSL is generally only giving 256Kbps or 384Kbps upload speeds. So, it's all very well thinking that Building 2 is downloading information from the server in Building 1 at 8Mbps but, if Building 1 is only sending it out at 384Kbps, then that's really all you're getting!

Some businesses (particularly those in rural locations that cannot get ADSL) are still stuck on 64Kbps/128Kbps ISDN, which is slower and considerably more expensive. That wasn't so bad when we were all using Office 97 and our files rarely went over 100Kbps but, these days, with increased file sizes, it just doesn't cut it.

As Joeofeg says, if you want reliability, then a dedicated leased line is the only way to go. Forget 50:1 or 20:1 contention ratios, a proper business leased line gives you 1:1 ...... but you'll pay for it! The benefit is, because you're paying so much, the carriers will give you decent service level agreements to fix faults within a few hours. But, in my experience at least, dedicated lines rarely have faults. You'll also have the benefit of being able to get the same upload speed as the download speed. So, if you have a single server in one site and that's going to be uploading data out to all the other buildings, then even having a 1Mbps leased line in that one building will give better performance than ADSL.

If you want to get somewhere in between, i.e. cheaper but upload speeds as good as the download speeds, then look at SDSL. In the UK, that's not a popular choice as it's too expensive for the smaller businesses and not reliable enough for the bigger businesses but it might be appropriate for your requirements.

Thank you both for your help. I would like to mention a couple of things. Firtstly, I live in Lusaka, Zambia, Central Africa and dedicated lines of here cost an arm and a leg "(and yr first born daughter)", secondly my client basically only requires daily updates of sales figures at the end of each day, so I don't think he really minds speeds of between 128kbs to 512kbs. The other offices are "one computer" foriegn currency exchange offices.Another thing is that one office is in an area that doesn't have DSL. So I was thinking..."dial-up" from that office then maybe ADSL from the other offices. He already has a broad band internet connection from his head.
office.

Any further help will be greatly appreciated.

Hi Chris. I think you've already got it worked out in that case. DSL should be more than adequate for your requirements in terms of speed. Even the office that cannot get DSL should be OK with a 128Kbps ISDN (dial-up) connection - if it's just for an end-of-day data upload back to head office, then you could leave it running for an hour or so if that's what it required. With 128Kbps ISDN, you can expect to transfer 10KB of data per second, which is a megabyte every minute and a half. No-one would be sitting around complaining about the speed if they can leave it running after they've gone home (don't forget to set the "Auto-disconnect" timer though!). Although 128Kbps ISDN is twice as expensive as 64Kbps ISDN (you pay for a phone call on two lines "bonded" together), I'd still recommend it in your case - 64Kbps is more likely to give you timeout issues.

Hope that helps

Thanks. Will keep you posted as I go along.

Can anyone help me please. I'm a student at a university, i have an assessment based on wireless networking; similar to Chris Kandaba's scenario. However, my scenario is as shown below:

Your group’s task is to analyse the computing and networking requirements for a typical small manufacturing company which is opening a new branch on a greenfield site on the outskirts of Wolverhampton . You are to produce an initial report specifying a suitable computer network with cost estimates. You are to present the findings of your report in a ten minute group presentation. You should assume that your report is confined to the new building but needs connectivity with the parent company which is situated in Bilston. The new building will have 2 floors with manufacturin on the ground floor with 20 pc’s distrubuted around it in various postions., on the upper floor the company is housing it’s accounts (5 PC’s) and design departments (15 high Spec PC’s) along with a number of admin (5 PC’s and support staff. (5(PC’s) whoi are spread across 4 small rooms. The building is 90m long by 50m wide. Yes it is greenfield site you can specify the sizes and postions of the rooms.

The company’s site has been given an Class C IP address of 199.41.35.0 / 24.

The report should cover the following areas at a minimum:

• A specification of a computer network which will meet the company's needs. It should include provision for connecting both sites.

please, if any body could suggest me any ideas then that would be fantastic.

Thank you

Kapil

It looks like they want to design wireless.

You have given IP address from 199.41.35.0 to 199.41.35.24.

Each small room requires a wirelss router.

Each floor requires a number of wireless router. Assume the coverage of each will be around 30 meter, or so. So you need to calculate how many routers you need based on the sizes given and the number of small rooms you have.

Assign IP address 199.41.35.0 to the whole plant this is to be used to connect to the other plants.

Each router will use its own IP address selected from the above.
Routers are installed in adequate locations such as close to the ceiling for better wirless coverage.

The subnet maks for all routers will be 255.255.255.0
assign different wirless channels to adjacent routers. For exasmple router first starting from the south wall will have chanel 1 second will have channel 6, third will have channel 11. Then start all over again (if you need, you can use other channels, i.e 2, 3, 4, 5,...)

Routers in each floor are wired to a 16 or 24 port switch.
Switches from each floor are wired to a wired router, that wired router also connect to the other plant.

Need to obtain leased lines to connect to other plant

All computer need to have wirless adapter.
Wirless adapter of each compouter needs to be progammed to talked to its own router using the router IP address and its subnet mask.

You should demonsterate that you have suryed the building prior to installing the routers.

Security needs to be WPA or WPA2

The cost for:
The routers
The switches
Mouting hardware
Cable and connector
If ac power needed for the routers, the cost of providing the wiring
labor cost (assume two hours for wiring each router)
Computer wirless adapter, if needed
cost of obtaining the lease line

Sorry, now I have to go to work

Thank you!!

I have listed the requirements below that may be needed, however my second task is to talk about the followig costs and how much is COULD cost for these requirements.


• Hub
• Wireless Router
• LAN
• ISP
• ADSL
• Cat 6 cables
• Wireless Routers
• Switches
• Wireless Adapters for PC’s and Laptops
• Cables
• Mounting Hardware