Help in setting up networking for a charity

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Bes

Bes

Bes

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Hi,

I am currently working with a charity in Kenya who needs to improve their networking situation..

At the moment they have a single Internet connection in their office and they want to extend it down to cover a tech centre that will have about 30 computers in it for the kids. I think they should be hard wiring these computers into a switch

They pay about $200 a month for their Internet connection, so a dedicated one for the tech centre is out of the question.

Their Internet is a mere 2Mbps (unlimited data) (Tested and they are getting this, no packet loss, etc). so I know it is going to be slow for the kids, but there is really no other option due to the high cost of Internet out here. 4G is out of the question, as the costs are high, and, again the contention of all those devices using it would be problematic.

I am also wondering if we should have a local caching server within the network to try and reduce bandwidth usage? (Squid) This could be running on one of those HP microservers or even a Raspberry Pi at first!

Currently the router they are using is a Cisco model that looks like it is from a home Internet package, so I am thinking they either need a managed switch in front of it, or a small business router that has better abilities to manage high numbers of requests, QoS settings, etc.

The office (Where the Internet connection comes in) and the Tech Centre are about 140m apart so I am thinking they will need to run either an armoured fibre optic cable, or use CAT5/6 with a repeater at the half way point

The tech centre needs wireless as well, as there are other devices like a few tablets, Raspberry Pi's, etc. that need connections, so I am thinking a Ubiquiti AP should do the job. Would this have capacity to actually allow all the 30 computers + other devices in the tech centre to all connect at once?

All ideas/ comments appreciated!
 
What is going to be on these 30 machines?

Ubiquiti AP would be fine for that many devices. You won't do much better for the price.

If you do use something like PFSense who will support it (and whatever else you do) going forward?

Cost of fibre and converters can be expensive, I'd have thought you should see adequate speeds with a decent outdoor cat6 dug into the ground.
 
I'd replace the Cisco router with pfSense running on that microserver. It'll act as the router, host a VPN server if you need to remote in to troubleshoot and also has a Squid add-on for the caching and QoS.

To get connectivity between two sites 140m away, assuming you have line of sight, two Ubiquiti nano stations would cover that no problem then a Ubiquiti AP in each building to provide wifi access to everyone. I think the cost of the nanostations would be similar to that length of cabling and a repeater. I've not laid ethernet that far on its own and I know generally 100m is considered the maximum for reaching gigabit speeds - I just don't know what happens after that. If it is just that speed tails off a bit then perhaps it won't matter.

You're going to need two APs whatever as one won't cover two buildings 140m apart.
 
Squid is a great idea. Getting the amount and speed of local storage will be trial and error though probably. I'd take a small SSD over a larger HDD for a first attempt.

Similarly, try and set up caching of DNS requests (e.g. pdnsd or Unbound) as this has a big effect on usability if pings are relatively high.
 
ChrisD.;30486060 said:
Forgot about those nano stations. Most likely pushing it with that length of cable between the buildings.
Click to expand...

If you don't think the nanostations are an option, and nor is cable, what would you suggest? Genuinely interested as I can't think of another cost effective solution for a charity.
 
Well, it would be fibre between the buildings. A length of multimode and two cat5e to fibre converters shouldn't cost too much.

150m LC to LC on Amazon for just over £100, I don't know if you could get it cheaper as I normally just tell my PM what to order and he has to use approved suppliers.

I suppose you could put an LC card in the microserver and then spec a switch on the far end with LC in it so you wouldn't need media converters.
 
BigT;30486921 said:
If you don't think the nanostations are an option, and nor is cable, what would you suggest? Genuinely interested as I can't think of another cost effective solution for a charity.
Click to expand...

He said forgot, did you read it as forget? I did at first so maybe you did the same :p
 
I'm not such squid caching will be that effective these days, as a lot of the web has moved to https, which isn't easy to cache without effectively breaking it's security (e.g. by being a man-in-the-middle).
 
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