Looking to upgrade Small Business Networking Equipment

[ppilot]

So currently at my business, I am looking to upgrade our networking equipment from consumer grade to more business class level.

Here's the current situation:
Two locations: Operations and Corporate. About four miles away from each other
- Will be adding another location in Seattle within a couple months that will need to be connected to

1. Internet at both locations provided by Comcast (50mb connection for .
2. No windows server or networked file storage
3. All files are being saved to Sharepoint sites/ One Drive accounts with the business premium subscriptions.

Operations
- Consists two trailers that have a hardline running between them, but a brand new facility will be built by next year
- Currently Four light concurrent users but will probably increase to 8 within 18 months
- Currently using old Netgear equipment

Corporate
- Six concurrent users that are more data intensive (will increase by another two within 24 months). Building does not have any Ethernet wiring and everybody currently is just using wifi.

- As for Corporate's lack of Ethernet, it's an older building (one part in the 70's and and addition in the 90's) that the owner bought about eight months ago and moved the admin and sales employs from the modular trailers the company's been using the last six years.

There was some existing thrown together cat 5 running to a couple rooms, but it was a F quality job and didn't bother actually routing things correctly, so we are better off right now not even using it.

Ideally we would want all three locations connected via VPN. Stupid question time, if I connect Operations and Seattle to Corporate via VPN, will Operations be able to print utilizing the printers at Seattle?

Here's what I am considering buying for the three different locations:

Operations
Ubiquiti Managed POE+ 24 Port - 250w Switch $ 365.90
Unifi AC PRO Wireless AP $ 128.91
Ubiquiti EdgeRouter POE Router $ 165.45
Corporate
Unifi AC PRO Wireless AP $ 128.91
Unifi AC Lite Wireless AP $ 77.16
Ubiquiti Edgerouter POE Router $ 165.45
Ubiquiti Managed POE+ 24 Port - 250w Switch $ 365.90
Seattle Location
Ubiquiti Edgerouter X - $49.00
Unifi AC Lite Wireless - $77.16


Thoughts?

 

[Samir]

Answering a few of your questions and giving you some feedback. I have 3 sites connected via vpn tunnels.

You'll really want to get some hardwired connections at that corporate office. If you have telephone wire in the walls, you can use ethernet extender boxes to get some wired ports across the building, especially if you're going to expand the number of users. You can even use the F quality cat5 wire as long as it has continuity. You only need a single pair of wires for 100Mbps when using this product:
https://www.netsys-direct.com/colle...oducts/managed-vdsl2-cpe-modem-router-nv-600a

The wifi will start to become a real problem as you scale users so get as much onto wired as you can.

As far as your printing question, yes you can easily print from one location to another directly. Each location will have its own subnet, so you basically will have access to any device from any location based on IP address. We use legacy 'scan to ftp' multi-function machines to scan all paperwork from sites into our headquarters. The machines pre-date wifi and still work great. Anything with an IP can be put on any network and have remote access. This opens up a lot of doors like using NVRs to corporate or remotely checking DVRs from any location. You can even use IOT devices across the VPN without having them reach out to the Internet.

I think you're in the right direction as far as equipment. Just keep in mind that configuring those edgerouters will take some time.

 

[thiggins]

You might consider adding some level of intrusion protection/packet inspection. PfSense is one option, Untangle is another.

ZyXEL also makes a line of relatively inexpensive UTMs.

 

[Samir]

Good point on the edge level protection. CDW has some watchguard products in their outlet right now for cheap (relative to regular price), and these units come with some very good intrusion detection stuff even with their security packages disabled. I've heard super things about Untangle, so that would be a way to piecemeal it and keep it on a budget of sorts. But remember, you get what you pay for in terms of intrusion protection, and just having solidly locked-policies (both IT and workflow) can prevent problems in the first place.

 

[colecaz]

For simplicity sake and support knowledge I would suggest using the same routers and hardware at all sites. It might cost $250 more to have all pro ap's and Edgerouter POE's but only having to learn and deal with one type has to be worth a lot of time.

Also, I know it's blasphemy but I've been successful in running 100 Mb Ethernet over cat 3 (AKA plain old 4 pair phone wiring) cable for 50-75 ft runs using two of the four pairs when it was already in place and not practical to pull cat 5e cable. Worth a try over using WiFi or PowerLine adapters.

 

[Samir]

For simplicity sake and support knowledge I would suggest using the same routers and hardware at all sites. It might cost $250 more to have all pro ap's and Edgerouter POE's but only having to learn and deal with one type has to be worth a lot of time.

Also, I know it's blasphemy but I've been successful in running 100 Mb Ethernet over cat 3 (AKA plain old 4 pair phone wiring) cable for 50-75 ft runs using two of the four pairs when it was already in place and not practical to pull cat 5e cable. Worth a try over using WiFi or PowerLine adapters.

This is a good point. Plus it makes it easy to have spares since just one spare can serve all 3 sites.

I've seen that done with 100Mbit before too. In fact, the original 100Mbit specs had different versions that ran on cat3. A lot of commercial ethernet extenders can get 100Mbit full-duplex over just a single pair of cat3 and for distances well beyond 300 ft.