What can a LAN do for you?
A LAN can make your business more productive in just a few months. This is based on these three primary factors:

First, you'll see an increase in personal productivity. When your office is connected, your people are too. So everyone has quicker, more convenient access to the resources you need. Also, with only one DSL line, employees can connect to the Internet concurrently at high speeds to conduct research and exchange information available around the world. Being connected means there's no more running around trading floppy or Zip disks, waiting to print at a designated printer, waiting for someone to disconnect from the Internet so you can connect or having to use someone else's computer to access a database.

Second, a LAN trims your communication budget. Exchanging information electronically can reduce paper, postage and overnight delivery fees. You can also lower phone bills with automatic faxing during off-peak hours. If you are linked to the Internet, your whole office can share a single Internet connection instead of paying monthly individual accounts.

And third, networking saves you money by letting you defer expensive equipment purchases. You won't have to buy that extra printer or tape backup when it's so easy to share what you already got.

Is your company ready for a LAN?
   • Do you have three or more computers?
   • Do more than three of your employees share one printer?
   • Does your company have, or plan to have broadband (DSL, T1 or Cable) Internet access?
   • Do your employees frequently need access to customer records, inventory or financial information?
   • Do your employees work regularly with large or graphic-intensive files?

Even one yes means your company is ready for a LAN.

Types of LAN's
LAN's can be cataloged in two basic groups:
   • Peer-to-peer LAN's: This kind of LAN's offers the ability to share workstation devices such as printers, and access disk drives on other workstations. This type of LAN is very easy and inexpensive to set up and maintain. However, its use in the corporate world is limited because of lack of security and fault tolerance. Examples are Windows 95, 98, NT and Windows 2000 Professional.
   • Client-server LAN's: Although more expensive to set up and maintain, this kind of LAN offers the most feature-intensive type of network with very reliable centralized file sharing and storage, security, fault tolerance as well as resource utilization. Examples are Windows 2000 Server, Windows NT Server, UNIX and Novell.
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Planning a Local Area Network

How do I plan a LAN?
Perhaps the most important issue in planning for a LAN is to keep in mind the growth of your organization. Growth in most organizations is inevitable, and in many, desired. Planning for a LAN that only meets your needs today is self-defeating in that you will have management and usage complications if you outgrow the Local Area Network. Keep in mind, however, that staged implementations of a LAN are desired and can provide means to spread the cost over several months or years. A phased implementation plan also allows you to grow with the LAN adding new components and parts as you master the old ones.
Regardless of the methods used for installing a LAN at your site, planning must incorporate as a minimum, the following components:
   • Type of existing equipment
   • Current applications
   • Current hardware and software usage
   • Goals of the LAN
   • Budget
   • Training & support
Additionally, depending on the situation, you may need to also consider:
   • Connections to other Local Area Network systems
   • Communication Protocol (We strongly suggest TCP/IP)
   • Availability of hardware/software
   • Any local standards (i.e., in a college/large corporation environment)
   • Availability of technical assistance

Disaster Preparation Plan (DPP)
The DPP you put in place should be tailored to your network environment. While environments vary in different organizations, there are five elements to consider when creating a comprehensive DPP. They are:
   • Hardware protection
   • The ability to maintain business operations during a disaster period until the server can be restored
   • A sound backup strategy
   • Off-site storage of backup tapes
   • Effective DPP management

Hardware protection
The hardware devices on your network (CPU’s, drives, monitors) are susceptible to damage from many disaster situations. Here is a list of equipment most often used today to protect hardware:
   • Uninterruptible power supplies (UPS)
   • Surge protectors
   • Security monitoring devices
If you do not have these items in place, you should consider installing them. The initial investment could be justified many times over in the event of disaster. Also, consider locating your most important computer, the server, in a safer location such as a room specifically designed to house it or at least a properly ventilated closet. This will keep the server away from unathorized and/or curious hands.

The ability to maintain business operations during a disaster period
Make sure proper precautions are taken by everyone to implement plans for network interruptions. For example, the phone lines in the sales department won’t stop ringing because the server is down, so orders may have to be handwritten until the server is up again. Each department should work out strategies for such occurrences. If the proper precautions are taken, the server can be rebuilt quickly and operations can still continue.

A sound backup strategy.
A well designed media rotation scheme plays a key role in quickly restoring your file server.

Off-site storage of backup tapes
It is imperative that at least one backup tape be moved off-site regularly. This ensures that if something happens to your facility, all of your backups are not be destroyed.

Effective DPP Management.
The last element – and possibly the most important – is the proper management of your DPP strategy. A person or group of people should be charged with constantly supervising your organization’s disaster preparation efforts. Someone should install and maintain hardware protection devices, make sure all departments have a plan if the server goes down temporarily and make sure that backups are made and rotated off-site regularly. Also, it is a good idea to document your DPP for reference purposes.

Understanding Virtual Private Networks or VPN's
A VPN is a process that allows the use of the Internet to create an extension of your private local area network to one or more remote locations such as your home or another office.

One example is a remote computer or server and a subscriber of an Internet service such as DSL or Cable where IP connectivity is established immediately after the user's computer is turned on. The VPN creates a private tunnel through the Internet and connects to a VPN-enabled remote access computer or server. After authentication, the user can access the corporate network achieving the same functionality as he or she was present at the office. Its reliability is limited only by the quality and speed of you broadband connection.

How VPN's work
When the VPN tunnel is created, data packets you send and retrieve are encapsulated, or wrapped, inside a new packet, routed and then decapsulated. Tunneling is combined with data confidentiality so the original packet data (as well as the original source and destination) is not revealed to those listening to traffic on the Internet. After the encapsulated packets reach their destination, the encapsulation is removed and the original packet header is used to route the packet to its final destination.

To the original source and destination peer, the tunnel is usually transparent and appears as just another point-to-point connection in the network path. The peers are unaware of any routers, switches, proxy servers, or other security gateways between the tunnel’s beginning point and the tunnel’s end point.

What it takes to install a VPN and how much it costs
There are many methods to create a VPN. Most require time consuming configurations and an expensive combination of hardware and software. However, recent technological advances make VPN’s very affordable now. New lines of economical VPN routers are quick to install and configure, do not require server or client-based software, allow 10 to 20 concurrent VPN tunnels and are as reliable and secure as their more expensive peers. What it used to be $8k and up to $10k recently is now $1000 or less.
Computer Palace engineers can evaluate your needs and recommend the VPN solution that match your specific needs. Your only requirement is to have a reliable broadband connection on both sides, such as DSL, Cable, T1, Frame Relay, etc.