Lan: Small Business Proposal

Small Business Network Proposal

LAN Concepts

A Consulting firm has an office located in Orlando, FLA which exclusively supports either by telephone or on-site assistance. It currently has a local area network (LAN) or centralized Internet access. The office has some wired users, but many employees have laptops that they use in many locations throughout the office. They also rely on many shared resources, including printers. With this network there will be six servers, all Windows Server 2008 ( Primary DC, Backup DC, File server, Exchange Server, Application Server, and a Web & FTP Server (will be on a DMZ).

Networking your small business so you can easily share internet connections, files and printers doesn't require a major commitment of time or expense. A wireless network requires a base station (a router or gateway) and a Network adapter for each computer on your network. Since you already have a wired network, you do not need to replace it completely with a wireless network. Instead, you may choose to use wireless technology to expand it to conference rooms, ad hoc work areas, and new floors or areas of your office space.

Extending your wired network with wireless is easy. If the wireless network needs to support more than 40 or 50 users, if your offices are spread across multiple floors, or if your office layout places some users very far away from the access point, you may need more than one access point. To handle this I would install multiple Cisco WAP4410N Wireless-N access points throughout the building.

The solutions that meet the various needs for implementing the WLAN would include hardware such as wireless access points, wireless network cards, firewalls, routers and gateways. Software essentials would include VPN, remote control and remote management.

With WLANs, users can access shared information without looking for a place to plug in, and network managers can set up or augment networks without installing or moving wires. WLANs...