Network

Steve09 · 11 Apr 2007 at 13:25

I have 3 buildings.
In a 10 mile radius.

Each building has 5 PC's in them.

Requirements:
Each buildings PC's need to be networked together across the 10 mile radius (so thats 15 PC's), in order to facilitate the coordination of trains, the sale of tickets and communication between the staff.

What type of network would I need for this?

I was thinking a Metropolitan Area Network, but I don't have a clue on how to connect the PC's up so they can do the requirements.
The only thing I can think of is running a 10 mile Ethernet cable from building to building and I am sure there are no Wireless routers or something that have a signal strength of 10 miles

Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks, Steve

ruffneck · 11 Apr 2007 at 13:53

Lease Line WAN

Syngress · 11 Apr 2007 at 14:42

depends on the uptime requirement's and cost, cheapest would be 3xADSL connections 1 to each site and then a VPN on top of this.

Syngress

Steve09 · 11 Apr 2007 at 14:48

Uptime will be 24/7
Budget is £11,500

But that has to include the purchasing of hardware, software and office equipment.

How would a VPN be incorporated to the 3 buildings?

Caged · 11 Apr 2007 at 15:11

£11,500 a year? Month?

Steve09 · 11 Apr 2007 at 16:39

£11,500 and thats it. Thats for the setting up of the network, purchasing the PC's for each building, purchasing software and for office furniture.

The monthly bills e.g. if there was to be a leased line, doesn't have to be thought about. The £11,500 is just for the initial setup.

Wyvern971 · 11 Apr 2007 at 17:12

How reliable does this connection need to be?

Not sure if ADSL can have an SLA. If it has to be guaranteed up then Leased Lines may be required.

Also what sort of bandwidth is required?
ADSL uplink speed may mean you want SDSL

either way unless you have bucket loads to spend a multi-site VPN would be the way to go (unless you nees silly fast speeds)

Most firewalls have a VPN option, as do some routers.

Steve09 · 11 Apr 2007 at 18:51

Not sure about bandwidth, nothing is mentioned.

I have just found this out...

The network needs to share data between the three buildings, a good level of privacy and each building needs Internet connectivity.

What you think I would need?

Would ADSL to each building, then connect each of the 5 PC's to a Router be OK?
Then with a VPN ontop to connect the 3 buildings up?
How would I set the VPN up?

Thank you.

NiCkNaMe · 11 Apr 2007 at 21:09

Not being funny or anything mate, but i'm assuming your going to be storing/processing bank details, etc... so i'd reccomend getting a network professional in for the job after the initial PC purchasing.

It seems like 3 ADSL connections with VPNs will do the trick, but you need to consider border firewalls to protect equipment/data... and it could get tricky for yourself if you aren't too familiar with it all!

Edit: You've also got to consider redundancy... maybe via ISDN for backup? Will also need configuring as DDR routing should a link fail. Depends on how big a operation this is tbh.

FC1983 · 11 Apr 2007 at 21:13

NiCkNaMe said:
Not being funny or anything mate, but i'm assuming your going to be storing/processing bank details, etc... so i'd reccomend getting a network professional in for the job after the initial PC purchasing.

It seems like 3 ADSL connections with VPNs will do the trick, but you need to consider border firewalls to protect equipment/data... and it could get tricky for yourself if you aren't too familiar with it all!

Edit: You've also got to consider redundancy... maybe via ISDN for backup? Will also need configuring as DDR routing should a link fail. Depends on how big a operation this is tbh.

It sounds theoretical, for coursework or something.

NiCkNaMe · 11 Apr 2007 at 21:15

FC1983 said:
It sounds theoretical, for coursework or something.

So it does

Steve09 · 11 Apr 2007 at 21:21

FC1983 said:
It sounds theoretical, for coursework or something.

He is correct!
I think the 3 ADSL's with VPN should do it.

But how do you set up a VPN?

I have had a look on the Internet, but nothing to show me how to set it up.

Steve

NiCkNaMe · 11 Apr 2007 at 21:31

Quick scan of google brings some links up:

http://www.windowsdevcenter.com/pub/a/windows/2004/03/09/vpn_connection.html

Shows how to configure user to network VPN's...

You will need a router that supports VPNs, and would need to configure the router using appropriate commands to deal with connections. You'd be wanting a network to network VPN, so have a google...

There's millions of ways it could be done.

You may want to balance the choices of ADSL against other solutions, such as Frame relay in a hub and spoke topology whereby one site acts as a HQ with the other 2 trailing of, then a internet VPN from each site as backup and a link between remote sites for other data transfer. This would provide reliability between 2 remote sites and your HQ (you'd generally get a service level agreement with FR, or MLPS).. and a less reliable connection between the two sites.

There's a ton of info available on the net