do small businesses require multiple routers?

[trauts14]

if a small business has for example 50 computers on the LAN can a normal home router to a 50 port switch handle this? it is weird to think of so many computers being run through a small router like i have at home.
i understand there are only so many ip addys a router can issue, but do small businesses use a simple router at their core?

 

[thiggins]

If your routing needs are simple, i.e. no VPN endpoint, no VLANs and the router has the bandwidth, the main questions are reliability and simultaneous sessions.

Consumer routers are designed for razor-thin margins and often omit things like heatsinks that can provide longer life.

Even if you aren't running Torrents, a lot of clients can eat up sessions if they are multitasking, especially with web-based apps.

If I were to go in that direction, I would not use either the wireless or switch functions in the router and use outboard devices instead. I'd also have a spare on hand and put it on a UPS.

I'm sure YeOldeStoneCat, claykin and other guys that service small bizzes for a living will chime in...

 

[mitanc]

If your routing needs are simple, i.e. no VPN endpoint, no VLANs and the router has the bandwidth, the main questions are reliability and simultaneous sessions.

Consumer routers are designed for razor-thin margins and often omit things like heatsinks that can provide longer life.

Even if you aren't running Torrents, a lot of clients can eat up sessions if they are multitasking, especially with web-based apps.

If I were to go in that direction, I would not use either the wireless or switch functions in the router and use outboard devices instead. I'd also have a spare on hand and put it on a UPS.

I'm sure YeOldeStoneCat, claykin and other guys that service small bizzes for a living will chime in...

Hi Tim,

Thanks for the post. This is my first time post on SNB, basically I live overseas in Asia and use the internet for a lot of functions. My home network is doing the following basically everyday:

- Downloading NZB / Torrents so I can watch my favorite programming
- Sending the video files across over the net to my iPad or set top boxes connected to my televisions in 3 locations
- Vonage VOIP telephone
- I have a streaming box for indian programming (for my parents and guests)
- Occasional streaming of local television (this is connected directly to ADSL Modem to their set top box)
- Occasional huge file transfers for friends who want to come over and rip my collection of videos
- The standard web usage which includes youtube, browsing, forum posting, online poker, gaming, etc.

I have noticed a huge degredation on my network performance and now my net connection disconnects like mad, multiple times a day.

Do you know what recomendation of hardware would be good to set up what you described? Basically I will replace my existing router (D-Link for over 5 years) and purchase a small switch. The router will connect to the switch which will connect to mediaserver (used to host and download the torrents) and vonage and my iMac. The rest of my house is connected to a large netgear switch which will connect to the small switch, this way that responsibility will be off the router. I use wifi mainly for laptops and iPhones, etc, its fairly light, but do you think I should get a dedicated device?

I am leaning towards a good modem with a lot of ram, cooling features, and decent wifi range.. if I am missing anything would love to hear what you guys recomend. Thanks!

 

[stevech]

I am leaning towards a good modem with...

Did you mean router?

(I'm a believer in using the cable/DSL modem from the ISP, let them rent it to me and then there's no finger-pointing if I buy my own and there's a problem).

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Hi!
SMB networks is what I do for a living.
I put in business grade routers....I will never do home grade sub 100 dollar routers for a small business.

Typically I used to do a lot of Linksys/Cisco "RV" series routers for clients. RV042, RV082, RV016, and lately....some of the RV220 and similar models.

Business grade routers different from home grade routers in several areas.
*Stability...firmware is "usually" more thoroughly developed and cooked. Biz grade routers typically have the stability to run for years on end without needing reboots, unlike most home grade routers.

Business grade routers tend to handle heavier loads better than home grade routers. It's not just about "speed" that you see in router comparison charts..just because some fancy wiz-bang router does a blisstering 800 megs of throughput in the router charts doesn't mean it will be a great router for a 50 node office network. Put some fast Asus or Netgear or Linksys home grade router in a business network..chances are after a day or two or a week or something..it will bog down, requiring a power cycle to bring back performance. Meanwhile..a good biz grade router that only did 200 megs in some benchmark test will happily run rock steady for weeks and months and months.

Also biz grade routers tend to have better true firewall features, they'll allow lots of ACLs to be setup for better securing public services that you setup in the port forwarding rules. And the ability to support multiple public IP aliases on the WAN interface, and 1:1 NAT, and better routing functionality.

Biz grade routers will tend to better support services you'll have running on your network, like many VoIP phones.

VPN abilities a whole different subject.

But over the past couple of years...I'm hardly doing plain NAT firewalls....for business networks, proper network design should have a UTM appliance at the edge. Unified Threat Management. Firewalls that do more than just be some basic NAT router, you need antivirus scanning of all traffic with multiple AV engines, anti malware scanning, ad blocking, phish blocking, web/content filtering, much better QoS/traffic shaping to ensure proper traffic gets priority over other traffic.

 

[dvnizr@gmail.com]

Great reply YeOldeStonecat

I am currently in the same boat as main poster. Differences are, we currently have about 55 end points and are going into a facility with 300 end points.

I am looking for a router that I can buy right now to support the 55 and then scale up to 300 when we move to the new facility within 6 months, without having me to buy a new router.

Features I am looking for are:
- Fail over currently and load balancing after moving to new facility
- content filtering with groups - groups of computers with full access, groups of computers with mild restrictions (no porn), groups of computers with full restrictions (no porn, no torrents, etc)
- VPN for remote accessing the LAN resources (intranet sites etc) while traveling out of the office
- QoS for voice traffic since we make VoIP calls using - Skype and 8x8 (similar to Vonage, they provide there telephony hardware adapters and we connect physical phones to them to make calls)

Which router and switches would you recommend for such an environment?

Thanks,
David

 

[Thatguy]

I am currently in the same boat as main poster. Differences are, we currently have about 55 end points and are going into a facility with 300 end points.

I am looking for a router that I can buy right now to support the 55 and then scale up to 300 when we move to the new facility within 6 months, without having me to buy a new router.

Features I am looking for are:
- Fail over currently and load balancing after moving to new facility
- content filtering with groups - groups of computers with full access, groups of computers with mild restrictions (no porn), groups of computers with full restrictions (no porn, no torrents, etc)
- VPN for remote accessing the LAN resources (intranet sites etc) while traveling out of the office
- QoS for voice traffic since we make VoIP calls using - Skype and 8x8 (similar to Vonage, they provide there telephony hardware adapters and we connect physical phones to them to make calls)

Which router and switches would you recommend for such an environment?

Thanks,
David

That really depends on the business. You have to think in terms of throughput and what you need to run. Do the clients need a lot of bandwidth? Are they just going to random websites for whatever? Do they need to pull lots of data? I worked in health care for years and we had to have high capacity routers to pull images quickly for Dr's for MRI's between multiple locations so we had to go with higher end equipment. But we could spend 5 grand on a router without them even blinking an eye. So really you have to do a site assessment to find what you really need and what you can afford.

If they don't need anything high powered i'm sure any Cisco ASA 5505/5510 series would be just fine.

 

[Mark Uhde]

Yes, most small businesses I've consulted for had home-grade routers at the core, at least around here. Heck, one of my clients had a Westell modem/router/AP combo at it's core and 5 D-Link 802.11g AP's plugged into it.

And they wondered why it went down every few minutes during events (which can have 500+ people on the property) but worked fine when no one was there, LOL. Their setup has been replaced with 11 AP's (a mix of EnGenius and Buffalo's running DD-WRT) (still far from what they need but they're on a very tight budget and it was an emergency fix) and a pfSense firewall/gateway/router with the modem in bridge-only mode, along with a Ubiquiti NanoStation M5 pair to bridge buildings.

Still slows to a crawl (overloaded AP's, overloaded 10/768 DSL), and their busiest events for the summer aren't for a couple weeks, but it stays UP and that's the key there. Not sure every AP will survive their busiest event, they KNOW the setup they have is still way less than I recommend, but they've got a good starting point to upgrade from.

Now, understand my perspective is skewed. Business owners find me when their networks don't work. If they did things right, I wouldn't be getting called

This client I mention because 1. I have permission to talk about them online, 2. Because it's a test case for me - how much budget can I cut and have a working network, 3. they're the reason I joined this site. Most of my work is extremely small businesses (3-4 AP's and 20-25 workstations tops). This setup pushed my knowledge.

 

[thiggins]

Mark, did you use any bandwidth control in the install?

 

[Mark Uhde]

Mark, did you use any bandwidth control in the install?

I'm using pfSense's traffic shaper and squid for both proxy and HTTP content filtering (squidGuard). Looking through logs from last week (approx 200 users on the network during the last event they had), and seeing latency spike up into the 500-1000ms range, I changed my traffic shaping rules to guarantee almost all the upstream bandwidth for ACKs when needed. Test, rinse, repeat. It's by far both the highest-demand and lowest-budget network I serve (and they pay me substantially less than my normal fee, which I'm okay with, it's a long story but this campground is a non-profit and has been a huge part of my life for many years).

 

[thiggins]

Thanks. Do you limit per-user bandwidth. My fitness club has its free Wi-Fi ratcheted down into a few 100 kbps per user (maybe even lower). Just about enough to stream Pandora and do email.

 

[Mark Uhde]

Nope. Personally, I am not a fan of doing so, I'd rather shape the traffic well so that the full bandwidth is available when not under load. Even up at that camp, I have yet to receive a complaint, and it's dramatically under-built. I've actually been very impressed with the EnGenius equipment. I've found it to perform better than anything else in the home office/small office range... but I don't have any way to scientifically test it under load (I don't have 60 laptops to do that type of stress testing). I have anecdotes of how well it performs, and that campsite has given me a great insight into it too... the fact that even under heavy-ish load, there were no complaints (massive slowdowns logged in RRD data, but no user complaints), speaks volumes to it's capability for the money.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Which router and switches would you recommend for such an environment?

Thanks,
David

Without knowing budget of the client, there's a lot more questions that need to be answered...but initially:
HP ProCurve switches...
I'd be doing Untangle on the edge ....for 300 users, on a 1U server with a pair of drives RAID 1. Just an i3 or i5 box with 4 gigs-o-rammage..and Intel or Broadcom NICs. Without knowing more info, I'm not sure which Untangle subscription package I'd go with.