Building a small office network

For those of us in the MIS field or for those that will be managing an MIS section, there will come a time when we will need to set up a small office network. Let us go through the various stages of setting up a small network and see what type of questions we need to ask.

Let me know if you would like to add, subtract, modify or recommend; Your input is valuable to me. You will find a little form at the bottom of this page for your comments. If this proves useful I will leave it here permanently. If this attracts little interest , I will take it off at the end of the semester. Here is one way to go.

1. Decide on how many PCs you will need. Don't forget one extra for the techie to do emergency work.
2. Let us take an example of 3-15 workstations.
3. You will need hardware and software.
4. Let us look at hardware first.
5. You can assemble a PC with today's prices for about $400.
6. (For Miami residents, you can buy parts between 25th street to 36th street and Milam Dairy (72nd Av) next to the airport.
7. For a bare bones PC on how to assemble it - you know how to do that already - if you have been in my CGS 3300 class.
8. You can also purchase 15 PCs. If you choose to purchase the PCs, make sure you purchase them from a company that will provide support and service. Not much point in buying something that has been assembled cheaply by someone, and then finding that you do not have the manuals for the motherboard or the CPU or the sound card. Some companies like www.DELL.com have industry awards for excellent service and a quick turnaround for your order.   
9. If you need 15 PCS , you need 15 NICs and 15 cat 5 cables. If you are going to have servers , you will also need one NIC and cable for each server.
10. You will also need 3 hubs perhaps 4. Each hub will connect 5 PCs.
11. Now that you have the initial hardware, you need software. You will need your workstation/PC operating system and you will need the network operating system as long as you are intending to make a client/server network.
12. Another way to go is peer-to-peer which is even less expensive using Windows 98.
13. The first OS is that of your workstations.
14. The second OS is that of your network.
15. Now you may need to save some money on other hardware. For example, if you need to print through a print server you can save money on printers. You connect 2-3 printers to a server and all 15 stations can print and manage their printing from there.
16. So, you could have one good laser printer, one fast inkjet printer and perhaps one dot matrix printer for accounting to serve all 15 stations.
17. Do we send and receive a great amount of faxes?
18. Consider a fax server.
19. How about the information we need to retrieve or update/ Is this done separately on each workstation or should this information be centralized for all employees to see and update. If this is so, you will need a database server.
20. Do we need to host a web page, or to supply information to our web page? Perhaps a web server would also be in order.
21. Do you want the user to connect to the internet? If so how many?
     
22. This requires a connection to the Net. If you try and do this through a modem, you will need one line per workstation. So if 15 people need to get on to the net at the same time , you will need 15 lines just for that. And it gets worse. If you have one or two lines dedicated for this, they will be always occupied, and not all employees will be able to log on at the time they want or need.
23. Next idea would be sharing DSL. This can be done. www.3com.com is an excellent first start to this for hardware.
24. You could also look at ISDN. As for a T1 - that will cost you $10,000-$12,000 per annum and the speed will only be 1.544 Mbps. A rather expensive solution for a small company unless it really needs it.
25. xDSL on the other hand might cost the company $80 a month. and this speed is 1.5 Mbps download. Perhaps 128 Kbps upload. Good enough in most cases.
26. We will need a SOHO router This costs about $180 from LinkSys, Nortel's costs $600. You can get at least 4-6 PCs logged on at the same time.
27. If you go through this route, you will not need a hub, so you are saving some money here.
28. ISDN is good for areas that do not have xDSL. such as far away areas from town centers. DSL uses copper wires, and it will not work with fiber optics.
29. For 15 PCs , I would estimate a total cost of about $20,000 if you buy and $12,000 if you assemble.
30. Make some calculations and let me know. Good luck!