I work on a iOS based software house and we recently moved office. We now have 10 iMacs, a couple of time-machines and 15 between iPhones/iPads.
The requirements we have are the following:
– Wired gigabit network for iMacs and backup-devices. We need to transfer a lot of data between iMacs as quickly as possible, but not constantly. Usually there will be 2-4 computers transferring data between each others for a short period of time;
– Wireless network, separated from the wired one (for mobile devices and clients) but on the same internet connection;
– Scalable up to 30 wired devices;
– Accessible from outside: it would be nice, perhaps not in the first months to be able to set up a vpn to access some iMacs from home. Mac compatible client for the vpn is a must.Right now we are using a wireless network attached to a netgear cheap-router. I guess I’d need at least a better router, a firewall and a switch. I’m quite lost among all the options for these devices.
Any advice will be appreciated. Just speak your mind and tell me what you would do in my situation. Budget is not tight but I’d hate to spend money for equipment I would not really use.
I’ve seen a couple of questions on the same topic but none of them have requirement for giga-bit and/or are related to macs.
Thanks!
Answer
There’s nothing wrong with sticking with the cheap router out to the Internet as that won’t affect the speed of transfer inside the office (and no matter how bad the router is, and netgear are pretty bad imho, they’ll still be faster than the connection itself).
For the office itself you probably need a better quality switch, as cadeyrn says, one with a good backplane speed – and one that supports jumbo frames and can be set to lock down duplex settings to a constant rather than auto-negotiate. To be honest, you can’t go a lot wrong here with any major supplier of quality networking, but if it were me I’d be looking at HP Procurves because I’ve found them to be reliable and a good balance between power and performance.
As for wireless, while I appreciate you need to use it for the sort of work you’re doing and as much as I enjoy the convenience of it myself at times, I’m not convinced that “fast”, “reliable” and “30 clients” belong in the same requirements list… don’t get me wrong, there’s some decent kit out there that will improve things but it will always be a big compromise.
Attribution
Source : Link , Question Author : duhanebel , Answer Author : Rob Moir
