Raw 03 - November 2008 - (Page 58)

RAW PROCOM INSTALLATIONS Moving? Some help with your Telephones & PC Network. Getting the infrastructure right T he basis of all electronic comms is the need to connect one device to another. Be it a PC to a computer network or a handset to a phone system. These used to be quite separate services but now with new technology such as “wireless” and “Voice over IP” there appears to be quite a lot of blurring. Wireless or cable? Cable if you can. Wireless may seem a good option instead of having all those cables running around the place but wireless lacks the speed that wires have, and that speed is likely to be needed in the future. Of course there are occasions when wireless makes sense such as in old buildings or for those members of staff on the move and not needing a desk of their own, but in most cases cable is best. What standard of cable? Use Category 5e – it’s cheaper, and will support the very latest LAN (Local Area Network) speeds. There are few technical benefits to Category 6 and these are unlikely to apply to most business premises. The next generation of speeds will best be provided by fibre optic not copper, so for now save yourself the money. How many cables and where Look at the building and decide where a Whether you are moving premises or upgrading the current premises there are some basics you will need to take on board. single person or set of printers could be located, then get two cables installed at each location. This will ensure capacity to add new people and/or allow the flexibility to move people without the need to call in a cabling company. Each cable must be terminated at a patch panel, a simple junction point usually housed in an electronic enclosure cabinet, and where services can easily be “patched” through, by non technical people, to a specific location. Make sure that a cabinet is installed which is big enough to house the cabling, network equipment, and phone equipment, and get cable management installed – it will make life so much easier in the future. Get different coloured patch leads for different services. e.g. PCs grey, Servers yellow, telephones green, etc. Data Comms The technology to link PCs to Servers has been standard for some time. Within a building current speeds are fast enough to support many applications and as long as basic rules are followed a good service can be provided to all users. The key is to ensure that main services are at the centre of the network and that these are connected to the fastest devices. Sounds simple, but it is amazing how often this is overlooked with the resultant slow down in the network. There are techniques to restrict certain applications being run, or give priority to others so as to provide the best performance for all users. This is probably most important when connecting to the outside world. This can be either to another local building over a wireless link say, or to a distant place via the internet. The Internet Internet access is a key business requirement nowadays, and as with everything else in life, you get what you pay for. If it’s simply a few emails and occasional web browsing then a basic service should suffice. If it is needed for more demanding, business critical services, then good quality, and perhaps duplicated, auto fail over 58 millionimpossible.com http://www.millionimpossible.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Raw 03 - November 2008

Raw 03 - November 2008 Contents Bradley Chapman Rachael Elnaugh Linda Klassen-Brown Heidi Weir Mark Asquith Emma Thompson Chris Wright

Raw 03 - November 2008

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