Sharing resources among different networks in LAN

[Ghaffar]

Dear All,

I came here to dwell deep into networking.

I have an office with 50 employees and currently setup a simple network not using a high end router, firwall or a domain.

Our main router is D-Link DIR-619L which is connected with ISP via PPPoE. This router has some switch ports which are further connected with access points TP-Link TL-WA901ND in AP mode via RJ-45. There are some other access point i.e. Ubiquiti Rocket M2 which is connected via main router in Router Mode. The reason for setting up in this mode is that at times I ending up with ip address limitations i.e. more devices connect to my network than the specified.

My question is how to share resources such as printers and shared folders via all wifi devices with different network witin lan? Can I solve this problem by defining static or dynamic routers within the routers or please tell me other workaround. I have tried with routes but no luck what so ever.

Thanks,

Ghaffar

 

[System Error Message]

Dear All,

I came here to dwell deep into networking.

I have an office with 50 employees and currently setup a simple network not using a high end router, firwall or a domain.

Our main router is D-Link DIR-619L which is connected with ISP via PPPoE. This router has some switch ports which are further connected with access points TP-Link TL-WA901ND in AP mode via RJ-45. There are some other access point i.e. Ubiquiti Rocket M2 which is connected via main router in Router Mode. The reason for setting up in this mode is that at times I ending up with ip address limitations i.e. more devices connect to my network than the specified.

My question is how to share resources such as printers and shared folders via all wifi devices with different network witin lan? Can I solve this problem by defining static or dynamic routers within the routers or please tell me other workaround. I have tried with routes but no luck what so ever.

Thanks,

Ghaffar

You should be ashamed of yourself, using such a terrible dlink for your business, dlink is one of the reasons why businesses and countries get hacked. If you need a user friendly router, there are better ones to choose from, even tp link is a better one, just avoid VPN routers.

You can create a bigger network, for example 192.168.0.0 with a subnet of 255.255.0.0 and that will handle thousands of devices, or simply use ipv6. If you are segmenting, then what you need to do is set up some static routes so that devices can talk to each other.

 

[Ghaffar]

Dear Sir,

Thank you so much for your reply. Your idea for a bigger network is great.

 

[coxhaus]

Having 50 devices on 1 network should work without any problems. Segmenting off your wireless can be a good thing to keep your wired network running fast. If you run your wireless on the same network as your wired network you will slow down your wired network. This will become more apparent as your internet speed increases past the wireless capabilities. It will also be apparent when running high speed local traffic.

You should not be running out of IP addresses with just 50 people in a class C setup typical of the small routers even if everybody has an iPhone. What are your IP scope setups?

The best way to connect up your users is not to go more than 3 switches deep. Connect the router to a large switch and fan out as many connections from 1 switch as possible. Then remember do not go more than 2 more deep.

I think the Cisco small business routers and switches are best for this environment. They are well balanced for multiple users. Buying a home router which runs fastest with 1 user is not what you want.

The Cisco RV320 or RV340 is a good router for this kind of setup. I use a Cisco small business SG300-28 switch in layer 3 mode to handle all my local routing. These are not for the faint of heart to setup but they work well and fast. They segment networks real well which allow for sharing printers and stuff for guest networks. I have a setup posted on this site with how to do this under my threads.

I have my daughters small business setup with my old Cisco RV320 router using wire only. No wireless slowdowns and her network is fast. They are a real estate office. There are currently 10 or 11 people. She is in the process of hiring 4 more agents. Almost all agents now have Intel i7 CPUs which run at 3.4GHz and turbo mode at 3.9. This keeps the main switch's fan running on my old Cisco 16 port gig switch constantly. They move data. Lots of pictures and floor layouts. It is pretty much happens when you click it. It is that fast.

When I took over, everything was really slow. You would get a little clock waiting for a response from the internet. The network was not setup well. I redid it. I have a thread on this also if you want more details.

 

[System Error Message]

Having 50 devices on 1 network should work without any problems. Segmenting off your wireless can be a good thing to keep your wired network running fast. If you run your wireless on the same network as your wired network you will slow down your wired network. This will become more apparent as your internet speed increases past the wireless capabilities. It will also be apparent when running high speed local traffic.

You should not be running out of IP addresses with just 50 people in a class C setup typical of the small routers even if everybody has an iPhone. What are your IP scope setups?

The best way to connect up your users is not to go more than 3 switches deep. Connect the router to a large switch and fan out as many connections from 1 switch as possible. Then remember do not go more than 2 more deep.

I think the Cisco small business routers and switches are best for this environment. They are well balanced for multiple users. Buying a home router which runs fastest with 1 user is not what you want.

The Cisco RV320 or RV340 is a good router for this kind of setup. I use a Cisco small business SG300-28 switch in layer 3 mode to handle all my local routing. These are not for the faint of heart to setup but they work well and fast. They segment networks real well which allow for sharing printers and stuff for guest networks. I have a setup posted on this site with how to do this under my threads.

I have my daughters small business setup with my old Cisco RV320 router using wire only. No wireless slowdowns and her network is fast. They are a real estate office. There are currently 10 or 11 people. She is in the process of hiring 4 more agents. Almost all agents now have Intel i7 CPUs which run at 3.4GHz and turbo mode at 3.9. This keeps the main switch's fan running on my old Cisco 16 port gig switch constantly. They move data. Lots of pictures and floor layouts. It is pretty much happens when you click it. It is that fast.

When I took over, everything was really slow. You would get a little clock waiting for a response from the internet. The network was not setup well. I redid it. I have a thread on this also if you want more details.

definitely no to the cisco RVs . Everyone nowadays have smartphones, so if you have 50 PCs and 50 people, that means 100 smartphones, about 10% may have their own laptops or another phone so add 10, the business itself may have some so perhaps 10-20 laptops additionally, 2 network printers at least, NAS, so in total just 50 people could use up to 200, now while this may seem enough for a class C network with network devices, network resources, 2-3 IPs per person, DHCP servers by default are sticky, they like to remember the same clients, and can be an issue when you start managing your network clients via the DHCP server. This is why having multiple class C addresses, or even a single class B can help. Normally if it were me i'd have multiple class Cs or combine a class B with some class Cs and do some routing and segmentation to make things pretty.

DHCP servers remembering clients are a good thing, lets you see who gets what lease and lets you configure various things, even hotspot and radius that i recommend every business implement as it helps to secure the network and can be tied with filtering and various other security measures. Theres nothing wrong about having more IPs/networks, or even ipv6 either.

 

[coxhaus]

Class B networks can get very large with you ending up with a large broadcast domain. Windows machines are very chatty talking to each other all the time. When you have hundreds of these Windows machines talking to each other it slows your network down. A class B network supports 64,000 users. You are much better off using a subnet for a smaller set of machines. If you can limit broadcast domains to small subnets like payroll, sales, or etc. you are better off. This is for the outside part of a network. If you have servers they will work best if they are in their own high speed subnet(VLAN). Do not add slow workstations to this server VLAN. The workstations slow your servers down as they chat with each other in the same broadcast domain. The workstations can not respond as fast as the high speed multi-cored servers so the servers wait for the slow workstations during domain broadcasts. A router will not be a good choice for the core of a network unless all your APPs are all in the internet. If you have local APPs and databases then you will want a layer 3 switch for local routing of all the network VLANs and your high speed core. A Cisco Rv340 router and a Cisco small business layer 3 switch will easily handle 50 users and their accessories.

I hope these thoughts help you design a fast network.

 

[System Error Message]

Class B networks can get very large with you ending up with a large broadcast domain. Windows machines are very chatty talking to each other all the time. When you have hundreds of these Windows machines talking to each other it slows your network down. A class B network supports 64,000 users. You are much better off using a subnet for a smaller set of machines. If you can limit broadcast domains to small subnets like payroll, sales, or etc. you are better off. This is for the outside part of a network. If you have servers they will work best if they are in their own high speed subnet(VLAN). Do not add slow workstations to this server VLAN. The workstations slow your servers down as they chat with each other in the same broadcast domain. The workstations can not respond as fast as the high speed multi-cored servers so the servers wait for the slow workstations during domain broadcasts. A router will not be a good choice for the core of a network unless all your APPs are all in the internet. If you have local APPs and databases then you will want a layer 3 switch for local routing of all the network VLANs and your high speed core. A Cisco Rv340 router and a Cisco small business layer 3 switch will easily handle 50 users and their accessories.

I hope these thoughts help you design a fast network.

actually class B networks overwhelm consumer routers like the crappy dlink the OP is using. This is where unfortunately a cisco RV might be able to handle if it had enough ram. Switches also will handle a class B network but it is the maximum that they can handle as class A networks or the internet itself is huge that no one device can store an entire table of every single host to route.

My suggestion to anyone designing a business network is to have multiple networks, use multiple class B and C networks where necessary and never to use a crappy dlink as your main router, any VPN routers or even the cisco RV . Instead use a proper router like pfsense, or any other non consumer enterprise capable router at least. You can use asus with 3rd party firmware as their routers typically come with a lot of ram (stock one has bugs with class B networks).

if a switch table is 65k addresses i would not use more than 1 class B network on it, as you could overload the tables.

Thanks to the class B network bug with stock asus router, i got my ASUS 88U for half price in the UK which is about the retail price when it came out as asus routers in the UK are horrendously overpriced.

 

[sfx2000]

50 users/desks - figure 3 devices/user* - round numbers - 150 devices...

Fine with a class C network, and this allows things to be flat and simple, no VLAN's really needed, and that reduces complexity.

* this accounts for each user having a desktop/laptop plus a phone, and gives some room for overhead and shared devices

The current router that @Ghaffar has is overloaded - it's not intended for an application like this - it's a home based device, and it is not appropriate for an application like what he mentions.

@coxhaus recommendation - the RV line is appropriate actually - the RV345 might be a good choice here.

With WiFi, if you offer this, consider 25 clients per AP - some AP's can handle more - and then there's footprint - at 2.4GHz, 1500 sq ft for good performance, at 5GHz, it's roughly half that.

 

[sfx2000]

You are much better off using a subnet for a smaller set of machines. If you can limit broadcast domains to small subnets like payroll, sales, or etc. you are better off. This is for the outside part of a network. If you have servers they will work best if they are in their own high speed subnet(VLAN). Do not add slow workstations to this server VLAN.

The only reason why I might suggest VLAN'ing things out with a small business network like this is the financial stuff - if one is doing payment cards, then this does suggest that separation is a good thing... credit/debit cards do involve compliance things there

(Same if this is a legal office for obvious reasons, or healthcare with regards to HIPAA)

Otherwise, keeping things flat with 50 desks is likely good enough.

 

[Ghaffar]

Having 50 devices on 1 network should work without any problems. Segmenting off your wireless can be a good thing to keep your wired network running fast. If you run your wireless on the same network as your wired network you will slow down your wired network. This will become more apparent as your internet speed increases past the wireless capabilities. It will also be apparent when running high speed local traffic.

You should not be running out of IP addresses with just 50 people in a class C setup typical of the small routers even if everybody has an iPhone. What are your IP scope setups?

The best way to connect up your users is not to go more than 3 switches deep. Connect the router to a large switch and fan out as many connections from 1 switch as possible. Then remember do not go more than 2 more deep.

I think the Cisco small business routers and switches are best for this environment. They are well balanced for multiple users. Buying a home router which runs fastest with 1 user is not what you want.

The Cisco RV320 or RV340 is a good router for this kind of setup. I use a Cisco small business SG300-28 switch in layer 3 mode to handle all my local routing. These are not for the faint of heart to setup but they work well and fast. They segment networks real well which allow for sharing printers and stuff for guest networks. I have a setup posted on this site with how to do this under my threads.

I have my daughters small business setup with my old Cisco RV320 router using wire only. No wireless slowdowns and her network is fast. They are a real estate office. There are currently 10 or 11 people. She is in the process of hiring 4 more agents. Almost all agents now have Intel i7 CPUs which run at 3.4GHz and turbo mode at 3.9. This keeps the main switch's fan running on my old Cisco 16 port gig switch constantly. They move data. Lots of pictures and floor layouts. It is pretty much happens when you click it. It is that fast.

When I took over, everything was really slow. You would get a little clock waiting for a response from the internet. The network was not setup well. I redid it. I have a thread on this also if you want more details.

Dear Sir,
Thank you very much for your reply. Well, at times we do meetings with our guests and their number vary, sometime about 30 and 50. Right now I have connected my d-link router with a 24 port cisco sf110/24 which is further connected with 6 access points, mostly tp-link. The reason for installing these number of ap is our two story (3 including ground) L shaped building with trees in-front was signal issues.

I will use either class a or class b address scheme with the total of 510 host per subnet and for router cisco rv345 is good option but it's much expensive than Ubiquiti ER-4 router which i think will full fill my needs.

Any ways thank you all for your wonderful supporting help ... you people are my gurus ...

 

[System Error Message]

Dear Sir,
Thank you very much for your reply. Well, at times we do meetings with our guests and their number vary, sometime about 30 and 50. Right now I have connected my d-link router with a 24 port cisco sf110/24 which is further connected with 6 access points, mostly tp-link. The reason for installing these number of ap is our two story (3 including ground) L shaped building with trees in-front was signal issues.

I will use either class a or class b address scheme with the total of 510 host per subnet and for router cisco rv345 is good option but it's much expensive than Ubiquiti ER-4 router which i think will full fill my needs.

Any ways thank you all for your wonderful supporting help ... you people are my gurus ...

stick to class B or C, check the address limit on your switches and as long as the ubiquiti router is fast enough for your WAN and has enough memory for the network, go right ahead. Note that ubiquiti advertised speeds arent real, especially if you utilise its features.

 

[ApexRon]

Designing an office network is so much more than IP addresses. An office network must survive viruses, hacking, power outage, and hardware failure. All guests and employee personal electronics must be on an isolated network. You have to ask the question, “What’s the financial loss per hour to the business in the event of a network outage?”

Then there are questions about network impact to overall employee productivity.