A simple network connection to share broadband internet connection at home is widely adopted which are commonly use portable wireless router connecting two or more computers at home. Building a simple network computer at home is not as much work as designing the large scale network environment that need lots of considerations and assessments, such as selecting scalable products for future growth, designing the concepts and policy for information security, documenting the SOPs and lots of works in an ongoing fashion.
Focusing to each of the LANs network design is essential before establishing internetwork connection to each of the business units to create a global corporate interconnection. It doesn’t mean that you don’t need to include WAN network connection into your initial networking design until you have completed each site network connection, but you need to make sure that an efficient local area network connection is in place.
Lots of works to do in completing network connection and it depends on how large the scale of your network design. Making a network connection in a company which offices are spread over several remote sites or even across geographical borders, is different than making a network connection within a local area network that connecting some buildings or even in just within a small office room. You must have completed the network design which includes the design of your computer system that will run on your computer network infrastructure. Network connection, this work can be very complicated depends on how large the size of your computer network is, and this network connection will become more complicated if you also need to include the backup plan in case of disaster.
Assume that you have already completed the network design which part of the sites diagram as in the picture below, how can you make a network connection base on it?
Network Connection Diagram
The server room, where some of the servers are located, is in the HR building. There are 80 users in this HR building. I said some of the servers (such as active directory DC) – why not all of the servers are located in the same room and in the same building? Learn more about management information security standard about server location (coming soon). There are still two other buildings must be included in the network connection:
1. Mining office which is around 70 meters away from the HR building (there are 80 users).
2. Workshop which is down the valley about 300 meters away from the HR office (50 users).
Total users in the network is around 200 users (80 in HR + 80 in Mining + 40 users in Workshop), and some other devices that need static address, such as servers, printers; wireless access points; switches and VoIP. you can use one private IP address network say 192.168.100.0/24 (254 individual IP can be used) for all network devices in your network connection. For a complete discussion in designing the IP address for this scenario check this link. You can use 4 cascading 24 ports switches in HR and Mining buildings with 100BaseT Ethernet standard network connection. Exception to server room you need to use 12 port Giga Ethernet switch for fast data transfer speed and this will be much benefit if you use a single autoloader network backup device for daily backup run at night for all your servers such as file servers; exchange and database servers.
Now, how can you make a network connection between HR building and Mining building where the distance is 70 meters away? Depends on the obstacles between the two buildings, but if you need to run UTP cable under the ground, you need to use Cat 5e network cable special for outdoor use which is waterproof. You can run this thick cable inside the pipe and buried on the ground, but for safety reason you should build a special path underground like a drainage system.
What about the network connection between the HR building and the Workshop? The Workshop is down the valley that is not possible to run the cable. You can use the wireless technology which links two or more points using radio frequency of 2 GHz. you can find this kind of wireless device in the market today such as Cisco Aironet. You can build a simple tower in each building where you can put the antenna of each Access Point device on top of the tower that allows two antennas in line of sight, no obstacle between them. This wireless device can transmit the data up to 58 Mbps; this is suitable to link network connection using the air as media transmission. Read more detail later on wireless local area network.
To complete this network connection, you still need to think about configuring the network and as well as setting up the network for all network devices in this network connection such as configuring automatic IP to PC clients; fix IP to servers; wireless access points; all switches and printers.
What next? The next thing to consider is documenting all the works done including the wiring diagram of the network that will ease you in troubleshooting the network; assessing the security risk; including the disaster recovery plan – a backup plan – a plan B in case of the disaster happened.
Ki Grinsing
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