SWITCHES & ROUTERS
Route one
Computer Networks , such as the LAN or WAN are no longer the feature of ‘ Blue chip ’ companies , government networks or the university campus , says Nick Beer , technical director at Dynamode UK .
Almost all computer users have some form of Local Area Network , such as the home broadband user with a combined wireless router provided ‘ free ’ by their ISP . Or the home teleworker , using the same hardware to connect to the central office via a secure link . And , of course , the medium sized to enterprise level network looking to utilise the latest IP applications such as VoIP , distributed datamining and high speed converged CCTV and server monitoring with an assured 99.9 per cent uptime in the event of a pending technical issue .
But no matter what size the network , it ’ s vital to understand your customer ’ s current and more importantly future requirements , to allow for organic growth of the networking and of course take into account future trends of networking technologies with a view to offering backward compatibility to the existing LAN or WAN infrastructure .
Identify your customer ’ s needs
A few years back most LANs and remote links ( such as VPNs ) simply transmitted low network overhead IP traffic such as web , email and maybe some link to a legacy IBM mainframe ( via Telnet ). Not any more . Convergence is the name of the game now , with companies and home teleworkers of all sizes looking to run multiple IP based applications along the same Cat5e , Cat6 and to a lesser extent , fibre optics to remote installations on campus .
With the advent of now genuinely acceptable VoIP ( meaning that unlike a few years back they suffered with poor audio quality and multiple standards ) allowing customers to reduce telephony costs both on campus and to remote teleworkers , video conferencing and the relatively newly accepted technology of IP-CCTV for surveillance . Coupled with server based applications and IP encryption , all of which place a heavy load on the Networking infrastructure and networking hardware .
32 | June 2017