wireless access for upto 15 users?

[far]

Just opening another branch office, I need a wireless connection for about 15 users - anyone know what kind of internet connection I need to buy?

 

I need to connect a server and 15 laptops

[Whitesupraboy2]

It will be business internet.

 

but I think you mean more what type of Router as well.

 

I.e Do you want the two offices to be able to look at files on each others network securely.

 

If so you'll a router supporting VPN and this will mean your internet connection will be one where you are given a static IP.

 

Need to know more about what you want to be able to do

[far]

thanks mate - yes you are right!

 

Essentially we have an office in London and a local server, we need to be able to allow access to our server by offices in FInland and vice versa.

 

I need to have a wireless router conecting all 15 laptops in the office and also allow all the laptops to connect wirelessly to both the server and the printer

[far]

....just been speaking to a mate who runs a company up in Soho, he said they have '100mb lan' can someone tell me what the hell this is? Is this something other than broadband? As I understand broadband only reaches 24mb

 

 

....could really do with a simple explanation - I googled and found stuff on the BT website but it doesnt really explain how it works

[Whitesupraboy2]

You need;

 

Internet in both offices both given a static IP address. (normally small additionational charge)

 

2 adsl routers that allow VPN, wireless if thats how you want the laptops to connect.

 

This will get the 2 networks linked. What you do with IP address ranges is up to you but you will need to configure the routers a little.

[far]

Cheers WSB

 

ok - basically the IT guy will come and sort it all out, he has buggered off on holiday and I need to get the stuff ordered

 

So whats this 100mb Lan business? I'm worried that 8mb broadband wont be big enough for 15 laptops

[danhicks22]

LAN stands for Local Area Network. It's a wired network that allows for 100 megabits per second of data to be transported around (assuming it's a 100mb LAN. It's possible to get gigabit LAN - 1000mb - or fibre, which is much faster but much more expensive). It's separate to your broadband.

 

Broadband is a connection to the Internet, your LAN is a way of connecting machines near each other and of sharing the Internet connection.

 

If you're going wireless then you'll probably have a 54mb WLAN (Wireless Local Area Network) router that will allow all your laptopts to share the broadband Internet connection and talk to each other.

[danhicks22]

It becomes more complicated when you want to introduce remote sites and allow them access to your local resources (and vice versa) as you will need hardware to control the access.

 

A standard wireless router probably won't allow for this so you might need a more sophisticated hardware infrastructure.

 

You also need to consider the security implications of having a corporate network completely linked to the Internet, as yours would be in the simple scenario discussed. Ideally you need to hide and firewall your corporate servers away from the Internet. You'd then have a hardware controlled VPN tunnel only allowing known hosts to have access to your network.

[danhicks22]

An 8mb broadband connection doesn't go that far. The 'mb' part, stands for megabits, rather than megabytes as it usually does which means a theoretical maximum download rate of 1 megabyte per second (8 bits in a byte) and you probably won't ever actually reach the full 8mb capacity.

 

If you want all 15 laptops accessing the Internet at once, as well as a remote site taking files from your servers (bear in mind that upload streams are generally of significantly smaller capactity than download) then you don't have a lot of bandwidth to spread around.

 

Having said that, if your 15 laptops aren't likely to be accessing the Internet that often or all at once then you're probably ok.

[far]

LAN stands for Local Area Network. It's a wired network that allows for 100 megabits per second of data to be transported around (assuming it's a 100mb LAN. It's possible to get gigabit LAN - 1000mb - or fibre, which is much faster but much more expensive). It's separate to your broadband.

 

Broadband is a connection to the Internet, your LAN is a way of connecting machines near each other and of sharing the Internet connection.

 

If you're going wireless then you'll probably have a 54mb WLAN (Wireless Local Area Network) router that will allow all your laptopts to share the broadband Internet connection and talk to each other.

 

thanks mate - for putting this into simple English - all I have been tasked with is looking at the various connectivity options, our HQ is in Finland so they are unable to do it from there.

 

Yes I do have a 54mb WLAN router, but how can a 100 meg LAN allow 100 megs of data to be transported across my network if my broadband speed is only 8meg max?

 

In terms of connectivity I though the max speed available is 24 megs in the UK so I am confused how the lan can work with 100 megs of data at any given time?

[Ric]

thanks mate - for putting this into simple English - all I have been tasked with is looking at the various connectivity options, our HQ is in Finland so they are unable to do it from there.

 

Yes I do have a 54mb WLAN router, but how can a 100 meg LAN allow 100 megs of data to be transported across my network if my broadband speed is only 8meg max?

 

In terms of connectivity I though the max speed available is 24 megs in the UK so I am confused how the lan can work with 100 megs of data at any given time?

 

leased lines, muchos money, something like 1k a month

[danhicks22]

Your broadband is only concerned with transferring data from your connection point (i.e. a router or a single computer) to the wider Internet (or WAN - Wide Area Network).

 

Your LAN is a separate concept, it's a closed group of machines connected to each other by small-coverage wireless or physical cable.

 

You can have a LAN without a connection to the Internet (broadband or otherwise) and you'll be able to share files between machines and survive happily. Here, any traffic will flow at the rate of 100mb, or whatever your network is capable of handling. Similarly, you can have an Internet connection to a single machine without a LAN or router of any kind being involved, with data being transferred at a rate up to the capacity of your Internet connection (e.g. 8mb broadband).

 

A router, wireless or wired, allows you to join the two together. The broadband connection plugs into the router, the machines on the LAN connect to the router and the router controls the traffic moving between the machines on the LAN and between the LAN and the Internet.

 

The 100mb speed applies to data being transferred between machines physically connected locally by cables (i.e. the LAN) - so that would be between any computer and the router or the router and any computer etc.

 

The 8mb applies to the transfer of data between your router and the Internet.

 

The two seperate speeds are for different types of transfer.

[Shovels]

Hi Far,

 

mate, if you can try and have the laptops wired to the network instead of wireless. Not really from a security issue, but more because of performance and down-time.

 

Are you workers going to be wondering around the office with their laptops? If so, then yes have it wireless, otherwise seriously consider having it wired.

 

From a performance side you will see a big difference when it comes to trying to print across a wireless network in comparison to a wired network (Wired being much faster)

 

Then you've got down-time. Wireless it notorious for being (urm... finiky).

 

Wires all the way

 

An 8Mb line for 15 users browsing the net will be fine, but if they're downloading large files then you may find it too slow. You may also want to look into an SDSL line instead of an ADSL line - SDSL has a higher upload speed than ADSL (which means that when you send data from your office to Finland it will be quicker).

 

Then there's the bandwidth usage - most ISPs have a limit. If you've got 15 users accessing files from a server across the internet then you may hit that limit very quickly. Then your ISP is possibly going to want more money from you.

 

If you've still got my number you can always give me a call. If not drop me a PM.

[far]

thanks Shovels - thats really useful -appreciate the input. Putting in cabling and a wired network infratructure was prooving a little expensive compared to wireless, however I will get some more quotes.

 

Dan- again appreciate the info here, made things much clearer for me.

 

I didnt realise that if the staff are accessing a server that counted towards my 'download limit'. We actually have a local server where everthing we use if kept - accessing this wont go towards my limit will it? , on top of this we have the server in Finland which isnt accessed that often. The package I am looking at gives us 40 gig dl allowance per month

 

cheers

Far

[danhicks22]

Access to your local server from your office here won't take any of your download allowance, since it's all within your LAN.

 

Access to your server here from Finland will though, since that has to travel over the Internet, and vice-versa for access of your Finland server from here.

 

40gb should go quite a long way and if most of your access is the local server you should be fine.

[far]

Great - thanks Dan.

 

SDSL is soooo much more bloody expensive than ADSL

 

Is it defo reccomended that I should get SDSL? We do upload info to the Finland server

Cheers

 

Farhan

[danhicks22]

It depends on your requirements. I'd suggest working through some typical scenarios and calculating some metrics on your expected usage.

 

Work out how often you want to transfer data, how much data you want to transfer and when you want to be doing the transfer.

 

If your only requirements can be satisfied by overnight jobs with ADSL bandwidth being sufficient then it might not be worth the money now.

 

SDSL is only a better option if it has a real benefit and you can only really decide that by formalising your requirements of the connection.

[far]

Yes just doing that and feeding back to IT

 

is there such a thing as an adsl provider who do a faster upload speed than 500kt?

 

Cheers

 

F

[danhicks22]

There are ADSL standards that support up to 3.5mb/s upstreams but as to which ISPs support them, I don't know.

 

This link (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adsl#ADSL_standards) will show the different ADSL standards available and a quick Google pulls back a discussion thread (http://www.skyuser.co.uk/forum/sky-broadband-feedback/8096-sky-say-max-g-dmt-product.html) about Sky Max, which seems to offer ITU-T Recommendation G.992.1, which has up to 1.3mb/s upstream.

 

You could try Googling for some of the other standards to see what comes up I guess.

[far]

Hi Dan - thanks for this, after doing a bit of research like you suggested I fould these guys http://www.managedcomms.co.uk/products/business-adsl-max

 

This is what there sales guy has wrote:

 

Based upon the postcode of SE1 3ER, I looked on our checker and evaluated an expected bandwidth of 6.3Mbps download, I can hypothesize that the upload can be expected to be 750Kbps.

 

 

 

The core of the network is maintained at 1:1 and is uncongested. After taking into account the contention of the lines from the exchange to your office, the worse-case contention ratio is 2.5:1.

 

 

 

Unfortunately due to the nature of ADSL I cannot offer any definitive guarantees on precise bandwidth, but once the connection has been established it will be more stable than a standard 20:1 connection.

 

 

 

The price below is the best quote I can give you:

 

 

 

Total cost of 1 x ADSL MAX Premium is £100.00 set-up and £80.00/month

 

 

 

My director has also offered you the following;

 

 

 

Total cost of 2 x ADSL MAX Premium is £200.00 set-up and £130.00/month

 

 

 

These connections would be separate from each other. In the future as your business requirements expand, the addition of one of our bonding devices would be the next logical step in increasing connectivity.

 

 

 

Please let me know if you have any more questions, or you would like me to send over an order form.

[danhicks22]

If their claims about the bandwidth and contention are to be believed then it sounds like a pretty good service. The idea of 'bonding' multiple ADSL lines is also quite appealing, allowing you to combine the bandwidth of the lines into what appears to your usage to be one line.

 

A contention of 2.5:1 means that on average you'd expect up to 2 and a half 'computers' (your business being a 'computer' and someone else's similar/personal use being a 'computer') sharing each megabit of bandwidth. As he mentions, typically you'd expect a contention of around 20:1 on a normal connection.

 

Two separate lines could also be useful for you, enabling you to keep general Internet traffic on one line and comms between here and Finland on the other, potentially decreasing the conflicting demands on the bandwidth.

 

Afraid I can't really give much opinion on the price itself - you will always pay more for a business connection than personal, but if the contention really is that good then it's probably a good deal. There's also only so much you can get from a broadband connection before your requirements lead you to leased lines, and they're crazy expensive.

 

As for the quoted bandwidths, I wouldn't bank on getting the maximum out of them. It may be my personal cynicism, but I'd say it's probably best to use an estimate of around 60-70% of those figures for a more realistic reflection of what you'll probably get (if 60% gives you enough then anything more is a bonus!).

 

Hope some of that makes sense, it's probably a bit all over the place! Overall it sounds like it could be a good deal, pending some shopping around. A useful benchmark if nothing else, and I do like the idea of 'bonding' multiple connections, which they may be uniquely placed to offer.

[far]

thanks Dan - sounds good, the package here http://www.managedcomms.co.uk/produc...iness-adsl-max

 

doesnt rely on adsl bonding, I think they just rely on optimising existing technologies.

 

The website quotes 832 KBPS so he was quoting 750 kbps based on the DL speed being directly proportional to the upload speed - other people are getting upload speedof 6.3-6.5 mbps

[danhicks22]

No worries - sounds good