Setting up new network for the church (HELP!)

[Bigg_alw]

Here is what we need?

Our church is about 200 Ft Long and 150 Wide. It is shaped kind of shaped like a U (or lowercased n) with the top part being over 200 ft long and the two ends being 150 ft. Three floors lots of brick and block walls

Near the middle of the church is where the Network closet will be.

The Church secretaries, accounting, confidential computers (three computers) and a server will be near one of the corners of the top. These need to be secure and separate from the rest of the network.

Then on the other corner is where we will have some of our offices, music minister, etc. need about four or five network connections in there.

On the far end of the building will be the Pastors office, and on the other far end will be where the sound and media computers.

Also we would like to have wireless throughout for mobile devices.

We are thinking

Internet -> Cable Modem -> Router -> Switch -> from switch to one router with added security and firewall -> to all accounting confidential computers and servers

-> from switch to another router (wireless) -> to switches to spreadthrough out building wired -> several access points for wireless through out building.


What do you think? Will this work. We are basically wanting to have 2 completely separate networks so that the "public" network cant see the "Confidential" network.

[Gracetech]

You may want to put a firewall between your internal networks. Otherwise you can traverse your networks.

Internet -> Cable Modem -> Router -> Firewall -> Switch ->


You will want managed switches as well unless you just want physically separate switches. I personally would go with managed switches and use vlan's by port. You will also want a source of DHCP if you are not going static with your ip's on each vlan. If you go with a Layer 3 switch then you will have DHCP and routing built in to the switches.

You will probably want to look into Access Points with multiple vlan tagging. I currently use Access Points with 4 VLan so i don't have to role out multiple AP's. You role out one AP and trunk it to the managed switch and the switch handles the mapping.

crt

[cw4u]

Chad mentioned a lot of good stuff.

For your offices, make sure you at least have 2 drops per wall in each office. From what I've experienced, none of our offices are configured the way they originally were when we first built our building. All 4 cat5 drops are in the same location on the same wall. So if you decide to put your desk somewhere else, you have to run a patch cable and it just looks bad. Plan for the future and put at least put two drops per wall.

[petereit]

Is going totally wireless out of the question? One Apple Airport Extreme base station in the network closet could provide both the private (secure) and public network access to ALL your computers.

[Twanks]

Covering a three story building with a single wireless connection is not really a reliable way of connecting the computers. Anything but a very simple home or (extremely) small business network should be built with a wired network at the core, with wireless at the endpoints. Going wired to essential computers will give the responsiveness needed at the corners of the building, whether that is the media room/center or the office computers.

[petereit]

Originally Posted by Twanks

Covering a three story building with a single wireless connection is not really a reliable way of connecting the computers. Anything but a very simple home or (extremely) small business network should be built with a wired network at the core, with wireless at the endpoints. Going wired to essential computers will give the responsiveness needed at the corners of the building, whether that is the media room/center or the office computers.

Works for us! None of our computers are wired. We have 20 computers in two separate buildings (more than 100 yards apart). Two Apple Airport Extreme's, one building-to-building wireless relay. Secure office network + free open internet access for everyone else.

Even if one Airport Extreme can't serve their whole building, I'd bet one or two $99 Airport Express modules would fill any gaps.

[rkresge]

Originally Posted by Twanks

Covering a three story building with a single wireless connection is not really a reliable way of connecting the computers. Anything but a very simple home or (extremely) small business network should be built with a wired network at the core, with wireless at the endpoints. Going wired to essential computers will give the responsiveness needed at the corners of the building, whether that is the media room/center or the office computers.

Bigg_alw mentioned "several access points" in his original post.

Obviously, depending on the building's construction and layout he might need more than "several".

Roger

[cw4u]

^^^Agreed.

A residence I work for required 6 Access points (2 per level) for adequate coverage. The amount of soundproofing that the family did to quiet the house required that many. Building materials play a huge factor in wireless networking.

[Twanks]

Originally Posted by rkresge

Bigg_alw mentioned "several access points" in his original post.

Obviously, depending on the building's construction and layout he might need more than "several".

Roger

Well of course, I was responding to petereit not Bigg_alw. But in response to petereit, I'm sure a totally wireless solution works well in particular cases. I know in the setup at our church and how we use network resources we cannot sacrifice slow throughput and packet loss.

[rkresge]

Originally Posted by Twanks

Well of course, I was responding to petereit not Bigg_alw. But in response to petereit, I'm sure a totally wireless solution works well in particular cases. I know in the setup at our church and how we use network resources we cannot sacrifice slow throughput and packet loss.

Properly designed and implemented, 802.11n will provide plenty of bandwidth for just about anything but the most bandwidth-intensive applications. I wouldn't recommend 802.11n for heavy-duty graphics, video and streaming media of any kind, but for 99% of just about anything it should be just fine.

802.11g and earlier, that's a different story.

Given that a single Cat 6 wired connection (professionally installed, tested and certified) can cost up to $300 today, before electronics, you can make a financial case for wireless in a big hurry.

Roger

[Twanks]

Originally Posted by rkresge

Properly designed and implemented, 802.11n will provide plenty of bandwidth for just about anything but the most bandwidth-intensive applications. I wouldn't recommend 802.11n for heavy-duty graphics, video and streaming media of any kind, but for 99% of just about anything it should be just fine.

802.11g and earlier, that's a different story.

Given that a single Cat 6 wired connection (professionally installed, tested and certified) can cost up to $300 today, before electronics, you can make a financial case for wireless in a big hurry.

Roger

I'm not saying to completely avoid wireless. Wireless N throughput on a perfect connection and no other wireless clients is usually around 50 Mbps which is plenty for web browsing and other normal activities. All I'm saying is that (typically) building your network around a wireless core is a bad idea unless you really have financial reasons to do otherwise.

Griffin

[rkresge]

Originally Posted by Twanks

I'm not saying to completely avoid wireless. Wireless N throughput on a perfect connection and no other wireless clients is usually around 50 Mbps which is plenty for web browsing and other normal activities. All I'm saying is that (typically) building your network around a wireless core is a bad idea unless you really have financial reasons to do otherwise.

Griffin

I think perhaps you're being a bit pessimistic about the performance of 802.11n in a well-designed implementation. 802.11n performance also does not suffer nearly as much with multiple connections as 802.11g and earlier did.

Roger