Proper Small Business Setup

[Markardi]

Hi,

I'm looking for suggestions and comments on what sort of network equipment I should have for my business because our current setup has some issues, mainly router issues.

First I'll let you know what we have. The building is 10000 sq ft. with half of that as one open production area and the other half as offices. The networking room has an open rack mount where all the ethernet drops go which is located in a 8' high walled off section at the back of the open production area.

Equipment-wise we have a fiber optic modem (15M up and down) going to a Dlink DIR-827 router. That links to two DGS-1024D gigabit switches and one DES-1008PA PoE switch. All of that is rack mounted with the patch panel for the Ethernet drops.

Concerning connected devices, we have 18 wired computers, 4 IP cameras, a Qnap NAS, and about 10 wireless laptops/smart phones etc. Also, we’re 14 people.

Should I be looking at commercial level networking equipment? I’ve briefly looked around but it seems there is no “one box” wireless router at the commercial level and I’d have to get a wired router and buy wireless access points to go with it.

My network knowledge isn’t the largest. I’ve set up everything we have now, with the help of SNB, but the commercial level stuff seems to have a lot more features and functions I don’t know a lot about.

If what I have is enough, as I mentioned before, I am having router issues as it's rebooting itself or dropping the internet connection. I created another topic for that:
http://forums.smallnetbuilder.com/showthread.php?t=6670

Thanks for all the help,
Mark

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

For business networks, unless it's just a small 3 or 4 workstation office....we prefer to separate the duties and get separate components....using business grade hardware.

Meaning...a wired business grade router, and if you need wireless....we put in access points. I generally stay away from home grade products.

I actually rarely use plain boxed routers now, I usually use a UTM appliance for my business clients. The added antivirus/antispyware protection that a UTM appliance adds is nearly mandatory these days to help fight against the "rogue/fake alert" antivirus garbage. But for boxed biz grade routers...back a couple of years ago my "go-to" device I usually used was a Linksys/Cisco RV0 series...like the RV042, RV082, RV016. Good solid stable routers.

Another thing I do....the edge equipment (modem/gateway/router/switch)...I plug those into a battery UPS....I never use just a plain surge strip. The battery UPS provides nice clean even power...which just seems to help my setups avoid the issues I commonly see in setups where people don't use a battery UPS. Modems or routers don't "just die" in a year or two like I see others complain about, and the network connection remains nice and stable.

 

[Markardi]

Thanks Stonecat.

I actually do have all the equipment connected to an APC rack mounted UPS and things were pretty stable for two years while using the DIR-825 until a firmware update bricked it.

I've started reading the SMB article on Building a UTM so I have an idea of what's involved. I've only ever dealt with home grade stuff and put together this network while at our old office which was only 3000 sq ft. and we were 8 people. We've been in this new building just over 1 year where I added the 2nd switch, PoE switch with cameras, and the NAS.

 

[Markardi]

So I've read the articles on building a UTM (and building an IDS) and have a better idea of the extra security features they provide. Actually building one though would take up too much time right now and my boss doesn't think it would be as reliable as an off the shelf product.

In my other post, Tim suggested the RouterBoard products as it might be between home grade and commercial grade. After reading the info on their website, they list the hardware spec, but I have no idea what kind of security features it provides.

What UTM appliances to you have experience with or prefer working with?

 

[thiggins]

Routerboards run the Mikrotik OS. Not UTM, but has VPN features.

 

[Markardi]

I've looked a few UTM appliance from Netgear, Cisco, SonicWall, and Watchguard and I have a question about throughput.

The Sonicwall NSA 240, for example, lists its Stateful Throughput as 600Mbps but has the the throughput of the security features at lower rates. It has a listed throughput of 115Mbps for the Gateway AV. Does this mean if the AV is enabled the throughput drops from 600 to 115? What happens when multiple features are enables, does the throughput drop to the slowest features or is it slower than that due to the multiple steps the data has to go through?

Netgear's ProSecure line claims to use a Stream-Scanning process to reduce the latency, so I'm guessing my latter question is true.

Now when it comes to performance, as I mentioned in the first post, we have fiber connection with 15M up and down service. Does that mean I only need to look for an appliance that can handle 30Mbps throughput with features enabled? If we commit to a longer contract, they'll up our service to 25M or 30M so really should I look at something with 60+Mbps?

And just for reference, are the Stateful Throughput values equivalent to the Total Simultaneous Throughput values used to rate the home grade products?

Thanks.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Actually building one though would take up too much time right now and my boss doesn't think it would be as reliable as an off the shelf product.

What UTM appliances to you have experience with or prefer working with?

From experience with quite a few of them, I find they're actually more reliable and stable than typical sub 500 dollar off the shelf routers that most SMB's will use. (most SMBs usually use sub 200 dollar mostly home grade routers...so this point is even more true). I mostly use a product called "Untangle". They get rebooted about once a year...and that is because I do a program upgrade on it which requires a reboot.

Quality stable hardware is the key...good supported Intel chipsets of business grade workstations/servers and Broadcom or Intel NICs. When you read about people having unreliable linux router distros....it's usually because they installed it on cheap hardware.