Networking advice

[Nifty Hat Mitch]

On Sat, Jan 22, 2005 at 03:32:08PM -0500, Kanwar Ranbir Sandhu wrote:
> On Thu, 2005-20-01 at 15:58 -0800, Nifty Hat Mitch wrote:
> > What about...
> > 
> >               Internet
> >                  |
> >            Cable-DSL Modem 
> >                  |
> >          Network-N-port-HUB
> >            |   |    |   |
....
> This is another option I had considered, and I agree, it's the simplest
> design.  However, the problem with it is that the business centre owner
> very recently completed renovations, and only supplied one Cat5 port to
> each office.  Since they want to put in Asterisk soon to replace the
> old, existing PBX, any tenant not connected to the local LAN will not
> have access to the PBX.

Ouch...

> Any tenants plugged into the first HUB/Switch (in order to receive one
> of the public IPs) in your diagram won't be able to use Asterisk, which
> would be located behind the firewall....

It is interesting what surfaces with some discusson ;-).

It is clear that you will need a serious managed router/ switch at some
point in the future.  You will need bandwidth for the PBX equivalent
as well as bandwidth for generic TCP/IP.  I have never seen an 'office'
with a single phone line: Main line, private line, fax, answering
machine.

I think the part that is most unclear to me is "What a tenant is".

You should be able to bootstrap things with a good multiport hub and a
linux box as a firewall+NAT+proxy+squid network management resource
but if you have only one link into each office you will need
eventually high bit rates and a small but possibly smart hub in each
office.

Start as simple as you can.   Work your way up to the more complex 
stuff one feature at a time but design as much as you can now.

Tenants are customers.  You can never 'remove' a service or feature
without grumble grump responses.  You can with planning expose 
some new services over a period of months.  With planning each new 
service will not hobble a previous feature and the tenant will
see increased value.

In the future, if one is pulling wire do not pull a single link.

Of interest the old phone line wires may be usefull for some low speed
IP traffic.

You will need some backup equipment.... use it to test.


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