Networking a small office.

funk-you

Hi all,

I've been asked to help out installing network equipment in a new small office. The setup is:

*CAT5 is cabled in. Rack on the wall.
*HP Procurve 2124 switch, bought by them which needs to be installed
*Eircom Plug and play ISDN (installed on the wall)
*Eircom Wireless router.
*1 Desktop PC (Another to be installed at a later date)
*2 x Laptops which need to be able to print, access shared folders and have internet access.
*Printer (Connected to desktop)
*Two Phones (There are two phone numbers (apparently) for the office)
*Panasonic KX - TD612 Phone system given to them that they would like installed.

Would anyone know the best way of going about this? Networks etc. is not really my game but I've been asked to help by a friend. Do I need anything else to get this set up?

-Funk

Dardania

Sounds pretty straightforward - you've pretty much everything there...

For the internet connectivity, I take it that the eircom wireless router is a netopia? And that there is also an analogue telephone line to provide DSL over? You don't need to do much here - plug it in, switch it on, and navigate to http://192.168.1.254 to set a WiFi SSID & setup WiFi security using WPA2 (important to stop scrotes freeloading your broadband)

If I might comment - you may not need the HP switch at all - eircom netopias usually have 4 ethernet ports on the back

For the telephone system, that panasonic usually takes ISDN trunk lines, so it sounds fine that you already have ISDN installed. It may be an idea to get it programmed by a specialist to get it singing, although you should be able to get it active by yourself...are the phones digital (with displays and speakerphone etc.) or analogue?

With the printer, and shared folders, you can go two ways: use the desktop PC as a file & print server, or a much better solution: get a NAS with a USB port so that it can be the file & print server - easier to manage, and cheaper in terms of power consumption if the desktop isn't going to be used all the time

funk-you

Thanks for the reply. Yeah, he got the office cable up with CAT5 with several boxes for connecting the equipment to the network (CAT5) scattered around the office and all cabled up to the rack where the switch will go.

He bought the switch on the advice of another IT guy who gave him a ridiculous quote to get the small network set up. So I'm kind of walking into this blind half way through someone elses plan.

Basicially what I am thinking is:

*Bolt the switch to the rack.
*Connect the Router to the switch. Is there an input port or similar for this? Is it then just a case of connecting the cable from the socket beside the desk I want to a port on the switch?
*Connect the router to the phone box (Or do I connect to the ISDN plug and play box?)
*Connect the PC's/laptops on the desks etc to the switch via the CAT5.
*Set up shared folders and printer etc on the main desktop for the laptops to connect to. I'm assuming the router/switch will allow internet connection sharing for all the computers and assign IPs etc?
*Connect the new phone system to the phone sockets on the plug and play box and try follow the instructions that came with it.

The guy is a bit scatterbrained and knows nothing about IT so this is a bit of a nightmare. I'm sure it wont be as bad as I think but would like to get this right first time as I'm only available to him on weekends.

Does that way of going about it sound right?

-Funk

Dardania

funk-you wrote: »

Thanks for the reply. Yeah, he got the office cable up with CAT5 with several boxes for connecting the equipment to the network (CAT5) scattered around the office and all cabled up to the rack where the switch will go.

He bought the switch on the advice of another IT guy who gave him a ridiculous quote to get the small network set up. So I'm kind of walking into this blind half way through someone elses plan.

Shame he bought it, as the Netopia (I'm presuming it's a netopia?) shoudl do what you need...

funk-you wrote: »

Basicially what I am thinking is:

*Bolt the switch to the rack.
*Connect the Router to the switch. Is there an input port or similar for this? Is it then just a case of connecting the cable from the socket beside the desk I want to a port on the switch?

Any of the 4 ethernet ports on the back of the netopia should do for the router<->switch uplink.
And then you're correct - patch from the switch to the patch point for the field wiring to the desks. I'd advise you get into some system such as telephones on the even numbered datapoints (they are all numbered right?)

funk-you wrote: »

*Connect the router to the phone box (Or do I connect to the ISDN plug and play box?)

The router has to connect to an eircom analogue socket - something that looks like this: http://broadbandsupport.eircom.net/images/modemSetUp/connect_splitter.jpg
Ignore the telephone in this case.

funk-you wrote: »

*Connect the PC's/laptops on the desks etc to the switch via the CAT5.
*Set up shared folders and printer etc on the main desktop for the laptops to connect to. I'm assuming the router/switch will allow internet connection sharing for all the computers and assign IPs etc?

It will - just do what I said in my first post, and make sure all the PCs / laptops are set to receive their IP address automatically...

funk-you wrote: »

*Connect the new phone system to the phone sockets on the plug and play box and try follow the instructions that came with it.

This is going to be the one item where you'll most likely have to get help - depending on what part of the world you're in I can recommend someone that can program these systems to get dancing. Essentially though, in terms of electrical connections, there should be an ISDN BRA/BRI port that looks the exact same as an ethernet port on the back of a PC - this has to plug into a corresponding port on the eircom NT1+ plug & play unit. Be aware though that while both ethernet cables and ISDN cables have the same RJ45 connectors at each end, the ISDN cable is completely straight through...

funk-you wrote: »

The guy is a bit scatterbrained and knows nothing about IT so this is a bit of a nightmare. I'm sure it wont be as bad as I think but would like to get this right first time as I'm only available to him on weekends.

Does that way of going about it sound right?

so far it sounds as though you've the jist of everything fine - post how you're getting on over the weekend and I'll keep an eye out for it. Good luck!

funk-you wrote: »

-Funk

funk-you

Sound Dardania, you're a lifesaver. I can strip/repair and tell you anything to do with high end server hardware but never really get to work the with networking/switch side of things. I have a fair idea of what to do but needed someone to tell me i'm not being a tit and doing it wrong as this is my first try.

I don't want this to be one of those dragged out jobs that you have to keep coming back to. Nice one man.

-Funk

funk-you

Job done. Everything went really smoothly.

Just a quick run through of what I did in case someone else has to do something similar.

*Bolted switch to rack.
*Populated ports from patch panel to the swich corresponding to the port numbers in the sockets around the office.
*Connected Netopia router to a free port on the switch and to the empty phone socket on the wall. (The switch has auto-uplink. Doesn't matter which port)
*Plugged in the router and the switch and powered on.
*Connected PC's and laptops around the office to the sockets on the walls. *Checked they could access the net.
*Set up shared drive on the main PC and allowed sharing of the printer.
*On each PC and laptop, discovered the printer and accessed the shared drives. + Put a shortcut on the desktops.

They decided not to go with the phone system as they only need 2/3 deskphones.

*Plugged the two phones into the phone sockets of the Eircom ISDN plug & play box.
*Lifted handset on phone 1 and entered:

**#73##111(The local number without area code)#

*Lifted handset on phone 2 and did the same with the second phone number they had.

*The main reception phone plugged into the splitter connected to the standard phone socket along with the netopia router.
*Rang all the phones, tested fine.
*Printed test pages from all the PC's/Laptops around the office.
*Checked I could access the shared drives/internet.

Job done. Thanks Dardania.

-Funk

Dardania

good to hear it went well for ya! once you got onto the familiar server territory I'm sure it was happy days ;-)

With the way you;ve the phones setup...will there ever be a need for reception to transfer calls to the offices?

thlint

I recently got a ADSL broadband from UTV and got it working with a 10 year old telephone system from eircom (opera 16/32) . The ADSl would not work in the normal sockets as you have to dial a line out also i think the system might stop the signal .
I disconnected the incoming line before the telephone system connected it to a standard eircom telephone socket pluged in the ADSL filter and the broadband router(netgear 150) connected this to computer network and all works fine. Then to get the line back on to the telephone system i pluged a telephone cable into the phone side of filter - cut the wires and cliped the 2 wires back into the incoming lines of the opera telephone system -- all seems to work OK . The only tool you need is a IPC insertion tool from Maplin 6.00 for joining cable to socket. A little untidy but functional