After carrying out an overview of a small network and having been asked to propose a list of improvements I would like to take this opportuntiy to welcome sugestions with anybody that has experience of this type.
This is my first post on this forum so I hope it is appropriate, if you feel it belongs on another forum on another site, sorry and please advise.
The current set up is 4PC's 7 Macs all newish laptops and running X OS's, there is an external service provider providing them with support and some server space via ftp plus internet access. The office is totally wireless. You may already see that network performance is going to take a hit, even with 802.11b the fact that they all go through one base station for these services is not great, they had to resort to sharing files with USB dongles as the network proves to slow to upload and download, it is likely that they email files to each other as well.
The best solution that I can come up with is to add another base station that links directly into either a Networked storage solution or a Mac mini with a couple of beefy firewire drives attached running retrospect. If anyone has experience of Stand alone network storage I would like to hear pluses and minuses. It would also be suguested to install Thursbys Dave on the Macs to get true and easier SMB file sharing working between Mac's and PC's. I intend to propose this as a first stage improvement. My only one concern is that the clients need to change wireless networks to do different tasks, would this be so? Or is there a user friendly manner for switching base stations? If they do not switch base stations they will be working on the slow network attempt to share files with Dave and be in the same boat. May be the answer is to install CAT5 with a decent switch, open to ideas.
The next phase of improvements would be to make the current base station redundant and re configure the base station that I installed to route out of the office for ftp space and internet access, but would this put me back into the original scenario of poor network performance? All I would of done was provide internal file storage and created additional internal network traffic by installing Dave. Keep in mind as well the they are a motion graphics company, decent size files.
Be great to hear some ideas, it would be nice for them to retain wireless but the more I think about it it looks unlikely they can. The idea is that I offer a support contract as well once this project has pleased them.
Thanks in advance
This is my first post on this forum so I hope it is appropriate, if you feel it belongs on another forum on another site, sorry and please advise.
The current set up is 4PC's 7 Macs all newish laptops and running X OS's, there is an external service provider providing them with support and some server space via ftp plus internet access. The office is totally wireless. You may already see that network performance is going to take a hit, even with 802.11b the fact that they all go through one base station for these services is not great, they had to resort to sharing files with USB dongles as the network proves to slow to upload and download, it is likely that they email files to each other as well.
The best solution that I can come up with is to add another base station that links directly into either a Networked storage solution or a Mac mini with a couple of beefy firewire drives attached running retrospect. If anyone has experience of Stand alone network storage I would like to hear pluses and minuses. It would also be suguested to install Thursbys Dave on the Macs to get true and easier SMB file sharing working between Mac's and PC's. I intend to propose this as a first stage improvement. My only one concern is that the clients need to change wireless networks to do different tasks, would this be so? Or is there a user friendly manner for switching base stations? If they do not switch base stations they will be working on the slow network attempt to share files with Dave and be in the same boat. May be the answer is to install CAT5 with a decent switch, open to ideas.
The next phase of improvements would be to make the current base station redundant and re configure the base station that I installed to route out of the office for ftp space and internet access, but would this put me back into the original scenario of poor network performance? All I would of done was provide internal file storage and created additional internal network traffic by installing Dave. Keep in mind as well the they are a motion graphics company, decent size files.
Be great to hear some ideas, it would be nice for them to retain wireless but the more I think about it it looks unlikely they can. The idea is that I offer a support contract as well once this project has pleased them.
Thanks in advance