Network Equipment    

You need to remember, the network hardware is the backbone of your computer systems.

The main components are the Router, modem, switch and network card.

This is the policeman for most small business networks, passing information from the outside world (internet) and letting it traverse to the inside world (your business network) and vice versa.

They are complex pieces of equipment. Some people in the I.T world specialise in maintaining routers and nothing else, and it takes them years and years to get good at it. Setting up a router to get the best out of it requires in depth knowledge and plenty of experience.

Cisco routers need a special mention here. If your business uses Cisco routers then you are using specialist hardware that requires specialist skills, expect to pay for that level of support accordingly.

This is the reason we steer away from Cisco routers, gaining access to staff who have the ability to maintain and configure them is hard and expensive. We don't like locking our clients into anything that is hard or expensive.

Once you get to a certain size, using Cisco routers may be the best course of action. Until you get to a staff level of 70 or so, its probably not too much of a concern.

The modem is the piece of hardware that communicates with the other end of the line. It opens and maintains the lines of communication within a specific framework. Their are modems for dialing up such as the old 56k modems as well as ADSL, ADSL +2 and cable modems.

In many businesses in Adelaide that use broadband technology, router and modem combination (all in one units) are the order of the day. While there is nothing wrong with this, it must be acknowledged that these items are nearly always residential grade in nature and provide limited security measures and features for your business networks.

This is the actual backbone of your business network. Its the bit that all the blue and or grey cables plug into. There are two main types, what's called managed and unmanaged. Managed switches allow for management and analysis of traffic that runs through them as well as giving making the ability to fault find network problems much easier. Un-managed pretty much offer no control other than what's hard coded into the switch at the factory.

Of these two types, they both split up into two common speed variants, Gigabit and Fast ethernet (10/100) The most commonly found speed is fast ethernet (10/100)

If you are upgrading your system then there is no reason that we can think of not to purchase a managed Gigabit switch. They are a marginally more expensive than fast ethernet, yet give your network 10 times the theoretical bandwidth of fast ethernet allowing large files to be transferred on average about 4 times as quick. For a 24 port managed gigabit switch, expect to pay in the order of $1000. An unmanaged version will be about half that.

To enable full gigabit speeds, each computer on your business network should have a gigabit network card to enable the greatest performance. If there are PC's that do not, its fine because the Gigabit switch it communicates with is backwards compatible, you will however be limited to the speed of the slowest component.

Most quality business computers now come with gigabit network cards built in. For your older computers, you can purchase gigabit cards for about $35 each.

Here is a great article (if a little old) on the benefits of gigabit technology.

This was the predecessor to the switch. We still come across the occasional hub at prospective clients around Adelaide and it is always takes the breath away.

They are very poor performers when it comes to passing network traffic due to the way they work. Here is the technical reason why a hub is worse than a switch if interested.

Invest in your network infrastructure, the equipment is not like PC's or servers in that they do not need upgrading every X years. Basically you run them till they break or your business environment dictates you need to upgrade due to common factors, such as growth.