Office 1 and 2 are in separate rooms in Building A on ground floor, Office 3 is on the first floor of Building A and Office 4 is 12 meters away on the ground floor. They all need a computer and internet access. The printers can be shared. I was going to buy 12 computers with wireless modems, a printer to share for each office and I think I need a main server. I have read about hubs and would that be the way to network.
I am studying computing and have an assignment to do. I have to network a small business that has 12 staff spread evenly over four offices. Office 1 and 2 are in separate rooms in Building A on ground floor, Office 3 is on the first floor of Building A and Office 4 is 12 meters away on the ground floor. they all need a computer and Internet access. The printers can be shared. I was going to buy 12 computers with wireless modems, a printer to share for each office and I think I need a main server. I have read about Hubs and would that be the way to network.
— Vicki
There are a few questions that need to be answered in order to best design the network to meet the criteria. Whether you use hubs or switches shouldn’t be a problem based on the number of workstations/printers that you mentioned. The first thing you need to get clarification is the distance between the offices. Look at the distances two different ways – point to point from one group of computers to the other and the distance assuming you had to run conventional network wiring. This will help you compare costs between wireless and wired networks.
You have issues to where the wireless modems (I assume that you are talking about Wi-fi) may not be able to get a good signal. It may take more than one wireless access point running in bridge mode to establish a connection between the different group of access points. This will also give you an idea as to whether or not running regular network wiring may be an option that could be cheaper than running multiple access points that may be needed depending on the amount of metal/concrete in the building which could block significant amounts of the wireless signal you are looking to use to link everything together.
If you go wireless, you need to look at putting in a wireless print server for each printer. This can be done with either an access point that has a printer connection or by using a separate wireless print server. Something else to look into is the encryption that you should be using to protect your data.
As to a main server, it probably would be a good idea to use some type of central storage system so that all of the files are in one place. This would also make things easier to back up from one system than if you have files scattered over multiple systems. When looking to connect things wirelessly, you need to take a look at what other wireless access is already in place. You also need to look at other items such as cordless phones or alarm systems that could be using the very same frequencies that the wireless networking you are looking to implement as these could interfere with the wireless networking and could appear as either slowness of the network or periodic disruptions in the wifi signal.
