Newbie Setting up a network for a small office

newbie2013 · Apr 5, 2013

Hello, I currently run a small gym and just moved into a larger building. I would like to setup a private hardwired internal network for 5 desktop computers as well as have a wireless access to the public(which means 100+people at times). I am more of a do it yourself person and consider myself an amateur techie. Basically I am looking for tips from you pro's out there on how this should be setup. As of now the buildings network wiring is a disaster, cat5 cables going nowhere, cables that are actually spliced(i mean stripped and twisted together) in some places. I am tearing all of these out and planning on replacing them.

So here's what I imagine: I have a high speed connection coming in to a router. from the router a cable will run to the first WAP (which is 10 feet away from the modem) Another cable running to the first office to a switch, from the switch two cables to two separate wall drops.

From that switch it will run across the ceiling to another switch by the other office which also goes to two wall drops, and a cable that goes to another switch by the front desk which is right infront of office number two, and the two desktops will be hardwired into that switch and well as the second WAP.

All computers should have internet access, and also I will configure a private network for business functionality.

Any thoughts/suggestions/input would be greatly appreciated!!

Onus · Apr 5, 2013

If you're anticipating up to 100 wireless customers, get enterprise-class WAPs. They're a lot more expensive, but typical consumer stuff will choke under the load. At the very least, get a dual-band wireless router.

choucove · Apr 5, 2013

You have daisy chained a lot of little switches, which will work, but it does cause problems. I'd recommend running a cable from your router to a single switch, and run all your network drops directly from that one switch. Easier to manage, less points of failure. Also, as Onus said, with that number of concurrent wireless connections you're going to need to set up an array of enterprise WAPs. If you have a very large area to cover you can go with more than three, but otherwise I would limit it to three or less, due to channel mapping. We recently have started working with Ubiquiti WAPs after having heard great things about their products, and I have been pretty impressed. If you're not planning on having everyone streaming video constantly, or needing the high throughput for file transfers etc. then you probably don't need to spend money on the dual band and dual radio style WAP as largely it will be unused. Most all devices still work on the 2.4 Ghz spectrum, and unless you know that people are going to utilize the 5 Ghz connection for some specific purpose, you can save some money there by utilizing performance 2.4 Ghz WAP instead.

bill001g · Apr 5, 2013

You may want to limit your "guest" wireless to just simple web surfing. You never know when the kid down the street comes by and sits outside and burns your bandwidth with illegal bit torrent.

All your equipment is going to have to support vlans if you plan to separate your business traffic from the guest traffic. Most better AP have this function as well as many routers. From the sounds of it you are have a number of switches already. You need to make sure those switches have the ability to run vlans. Normally the spec will say 802.1q. Since these tend to be a little more expensive it may pay to run more cable and reduce the number of switches.

Onus · Apr 5, 2013

I agree with choucove on the number of switches. The more you have, the more latency you introduce into your network. Depending on distances, I would think no more than two would be needed; one located near the modem (perhaps in a primary wiring closet or even a single shelf somewhere), and the other in another closet near the far offices.
Routers that support guest network functions typically also allow access rules. Being a gym, I suspect you want people to be able to stream music or maybe even video (if only for songs recorded on YouTube) during their workouts. You may be able to block common file sharing ports though. You can keep the pron-hunting wardrivers off by using a guest password and/or MAC-based access control list; the latter will require members to provide the MAC addresses of their devices, and you'll need someone available to enter it into your router if you want to get it turned on immediately.

choucove · Apr 5, 2013

If you are concerned about keeping inappropriate content off of your network for guests, you can look into getting a firewall for your primary router which supports content filtering, or some other device which can provide content filtering for you. I do the computer work at the local public library and we use a Sonicwall firewall with content filtering services for this purpose, and it works great. It is an annual subscription fee, but there's no hassle at all and we never have a problem with it.

The added benefit is if you do decide VLANs are needed (which, sounds very likely since you will have a public guest network kept separate from your private business network) then you can also use the Sonicwall as your primary router to route between the two VLANs, since a Layer 2 switch cannot do this.

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