Seperating small network into nodes

  • Thread starter Thread starter Paul in San Diego
  • Start date Start date
P

Paul in San Diego

I have a client moving into a new office this weekend and I need to get the
network running within 24 hours....didn't seem like much of an issue because
there's only a dozen PC's.

I ran them all (windows XP) peer to peer as soon as the cable guy wired the
walls and topped all the outlets out with plates. All was fine, all PC's
spoke to each other just fine right out of the gate. ;-)

But then he came up with three other machines, asking them to go into
offices that already had 1 computer each in them. Obviously I need to split
the network further but if I put routers in those offices to share the
network further, how can I get around having new nodes on the network?

How do I do this properly now that walls are in, and I can't run more cable
across the building to the second PC's in these offices? It sure would have
been nice if I had this info last week when we were running the cable in the
walls and there was no ceiling!
 
Paul,

Probably a number of different solutions you can do but one that may be more
of a benefit - and a solution to your problem is to install a > printer
server < in each of those offices. They're small (1"H x 4"W x 3"D) and have
a small power cube that plugs into a wall outlet.

I just installed two of them. I got the 4 port LinkSys print servers in
order to solve a similar situation. The port to the printer (on the model I
chose) was USB with 4, RJ45 jacks. The two (before) dedicated printers are
now on the network and any of the computers can reach them since they're
assigned a network address. You can configure everything manually or use
DHCP - they work either way, plus there are other options depending on the
model. Got these at CompUSA but Best Buy, Staples and OfficeMax probably
carry them.

A cable from your router/switch that goes into the office would connect to
port 1 on the print server. The two computers in that office connect to the
print server via standard Cat 5 cables and go from the NIC to port 2 and
port 3 on the print server (so you'll need some short cables to go from the
'puters to the print server). That leaves one port for future expansion on
the print server and the printer in that office (if any) is now on the
network and not tied to any single computer - unless you want it to be of
course. Setup for the printer is dead-easy and the print server is
transparent to the two (or 3) connected computers. Cost was about $60 each
and as I they come with a USB or parallel connector for the printer.

I initially purchased the Hawking brand of print servers and they ended up
being a problem. Had to reset them every day - back they went. Installed
the LinkSys models and had everything connected, configured and tested in
about 30 min. for both. Even if you don't want to use the print server
function right now, you use the other connections as a transparent switch.
These are also good for bridging two networks if needed - but that is a
whole 'nuther headache.....

Then there's wireless, power line Ethernet, X10, add ......

Bob S.
 
There are any number of small workgroup switches or hubs that can provide
four to eight ports of connectivity from a single wall plug. Check your
favorite network hardware manufacturer and you'll find a handful of them.
 
Richard said:
There are any number of small workgroup switches or hubs that can provide
four to eight ports of connectivity from a single wall plug. Check your
favorite network hardware manufacturer and you'll find a handful of them.
Click to expand...

I agree that a switch or hub sounds like the best answer. But read the specs
before you buy a hub to make sure it supports 10/100 Mb/s auto-sensing; some
older hubs only used 10 Mb/s.

If you have some laying around, you could use a router in place of each
switch or hub, but you'll probably want to turn off their DHCP server
capability to let the DHCP requests (from PCs) flow thru to a single DHCP
server per workgroup.
 
Back
Top