Simple Internet for Small Office

This isn't technically schools related, but my brother works for a small voluntary organisation that basically rents out office space to co-workers/new business startups etc.

There currently not impressed by their IT company and asked if I could have a look. They have no central servers, the network is just for internet access etc. There IT support contract is up for renewal.

There current set up (in order of connections):
- 2 x Draytek Modems (with a respective ADSL Line each)
-One of these (Router/Load Balancer) Attachment 16046
-3Com 3300XM Switch - Netgear GS748TS
- Then from there to the Ethernet sockets around the building via the patch panel etc
- Plus several Draytek wireless access points hang off them.

They are planning to ditch the IT company, and asked if I could set them up, the IT company will take back the Modems, load balancer, 3com switch, and Draytek Access Points.

So is it as simple as me adding 2 new ADSL Modems, replacing load balancer, replacing the 3com switch with another Netgear GS748TS?, adding some Netgear Wireless Access points ((2x WNDAP350), a POE switch ( GS108T) and a Wireless controller? (WMS5316) .

They already have 2 WNDAP350s I put in last week and are really happy with them.

Which one of the devices will be the DHCP controller, the router? Any tips appreciated and/or hardware suggestions.

Thanks, sorry for long post.

No problem with it not being a school related issue.

So basically with the current setup anyone renting an office space is all on the same network?

Ben

Yep, they only have one work PC. I think the "router" is a load balancer, which makes more sense.

The modems in use are two of these: DrayTek Vigor 120 ADSL2+ Ethernet Modem - V120

Quote:

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Originally Posted by danielson81

Which one of the devices will be the DHCP controller, the router? Any tips appreciated and/or hardware suggestions.

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I've just bought a small MicroTik RouterBoard for home, a rackmount version would probably be the kind of thing you're looking for:

LinITX.com - MikroTik Routers

From their documentation, it looks as though you can get RouterOS to do load balancing:

NTH load balancing with masquerade - MikroTik Wiki

To be honest its more likely to be some sort of firewall then a load balancer, it may well have load balancing capabilities or policy based routing.

With regards to the ownership of the kit it all depends on what is in the contract, I supply kit to all our customers, but once they pay for it, its there's we support it and maintain it. Should that customer want to leave we will provide them with all the documentation they want. Any knowing roughly the firms in the vicinity of where you are located I would hope they would do the same, but i know when we have taken over clients the information provided is next to nothing.

We regards to ADSL modems the best ones I've found at the moment seem to be Zyxel which are really easy to configure. Also I would put a new firewall device in place which can do the policy based routing/failover (load balancing ADSL can be tricky).

Also depending on location they may also want to consider the ADSL lines - does it provide the quality needed with good enough SLA's - should they be looking more to EFM line with ADSL backup (built in redundancy) with proper SLA's??