Netowork Help

[Drobbins]

Hey,

Iam looking for some advice for a small home office, iam setting up a online web company and am looking to put two computers on a 8mb pipe with redundancy all packeged into the network setup any advice would be great.

Drobbins

[pak000]

if you are running a website from your personal adsl line, you are going to have to hope that you don't get too many users. I can't recall what the upstream is on adslmax, but i think its 512k as an absolute maximum. Its going to be hideously slow if people are trying to access any media, and if you upstream is maxed, you won't be able to download anything either.

If you really want to look at setting up a web company, i would suggest a shell, dedicated box or colo at a facility somewhere

[EtheAv8r]

If you are setting up a web company and want to be taken seriously, then you need to provide decent response from your web site - and that means a business class SDSL link rather than a 'domestic' or mainly browsing & email, ADSL link. S is for synchronous - both Upstream and Downstream speeds are the same; A is for asynchronous meaning that the Upstream data transfer rate is a mere fraction of the Downstream data transfer rate and not a lot of use for supporting a serious web server… but OK for low usage.

Probably best to have your web site Hosted – it will be easier, cheaper, faster… and all round a better solution…

[Drobbins]

I think people are getting confused i know that i want the website hosted in a Datacenter which we already have covered but i want the office on a network with some redudency incase of any failures so that we can still access the web i was just looking for some advice on a network setup.

Drobbins

[RedPutty]

redundant 8mb pipes sounds like overkill for 2 office users, it would cost a fair bit.

[Moby-Dick]

to do it properly might cost you more than you've bargained for - you'll need 2 of what ever connections you want ( DSLMax etc ) and make sure they both allow multiple external IP's
You'll then need a couple of routers ( you could get a single, more expensive one , but then you still give yourself a single point of failure ) and at least 1 gateway router ( in certain circumstances this may have other roles )

Essentially the more levels of fault tolerance you build in , the more expensive it'll get

but in terms of connectivity failure , you have to consider the ways it coudl fail eg. some road worker manaes to put a powerdrill through the cable to your street , if both your lines come from the same nodei n BT's network , both of your connections will go down , so you'll have to consider having 2 different types of connectivity , which will further complicate issues.

you'll also have to consider hardware resiliancy , what happens if you have a power cut , ot one of your routers takes up smoking ?

If you dont want to go into too much detail in public , feel free to PM me

[arthurleung]

If you only need backup internet access, get a 56K modem...

[Drobbins]

to do it properly might cost you more than you've bargained for - you'll need 2 of what ever connections you want ( DSLMax etc ) and make sure they both allow multiple external IP's
You'll then need a couple of routers ( you could get a single, more expensive one , but then you still give yourself a single point of failure ) and at least 1 gateway router ( in certain circumstances this may have other roles )

Essentially the more levels of fault tolerance you build in , the more expensive it'll get

but in terms of connectivity failure , you have to consider the ways it coudl fail eg. some road worker manaes to put a powerdrill through the cable to your street , if both your lines come from the same nodei n BT's network , both of your connections will go down , so you'll have to consider having 2 different types of connectivity , which will further complicate issues.

you'll also have to consider hardware resiliancy , what happens if you have a power cut , ot one of your routers takes up smoking ?

If you dont want to go into too much detail in public , feel free to PM me

Thanks for your reply moby...basically i want something that will allow me to gain access to the company e-commerce site during a hardware or human failure my main pipe will be a 8mb line but i was thinking of having a cheaper lower speed line for the backup soloution as this would still allow access to the site but with minimal speed.

Two routers is also a must, i dont really want any with fancy features just somehting with rock solid stability and a hefty firewall.

Als oyou mentioned about a power outage now i have no previous experiance in eht industry level of things so i would have no idea how i would power the office if the power went out.

I want to do everything properly becuase if the erve center of the company is down (the office) then what is the point.

Drobbins

[Moby-Dick]

How about approaching it from a different angle

if you look at the nerve centre being the servers then where you are is less important , provided you can connect to those servers.

You say that you are running e-commerce tye applications on it , which I presume generate orders over email , or to a client side application in your office ?

Make sure you have a decent UPS for all your kit in the office ( I assume your server side stuff will have this already. If not , then change hosts fast !)

and the single most important thing you can do is backup regularly and test those backups. ( of client side and sserver side data )

data loss will have a much heavier impact than a connectivity outtage , so plan accordingly

[Drobbins]

The servers are not my concern they are with a reliable UK hosting company who has space in some of the Uk's top datacenters.

My main concern is the office and how i can avoid loosing the interenet connection becuase as you said Moby the site will send the office sales team a email every time a order is processed so we really need access to some form of interent all the time and also a form of backup if we loose power to at leat post a message on teh site to appologise for the inconveniance 10 - 15mins

Drobbins

[pak000]

if its just the collection of emails, then have a backup dialup system, and when the main link goes down tell everyone they can only use emails, i doubt the sending or receiving of them will be that intensive bandwidth wise