Tuesday, January 16, 2018

[Small Business] Want to make our network more efficient

Hello guys, I don't have a specific question but was wondering if you guys had any suggestions to improving / polishing the setup at a small business I'm working at. Networking isn't my specialty but I've set up our network from what I've learned mostly from searching online and a little common sense.

Here is our current setup:

Ciena 3930 fiber modem/switch (provided by at&t) in MPOE

fiber cable drop through ceiling from MPOE --> office IT room

fiber connected to media converter

ethernet cable connected to Orbi router

Orbi router connected to Cisco switch

Switch feeds some orbi satellites throughout the office and some conference rooms' ethernet ports on the wall

We are a pretty small startup so we don't have any servers or other network equipment (all cloud based), so the setup is relatively simple.

Right now, everything works but I just feel like there could be improvements made.

I'm not a huge fan of the Orbi system as I feel like I don't have much control over it, including different SSID's for 2.4/5 GHz. Some devices seem to be forcing onto 5GHz in poor conditions giving slower WiFi speeds (just a wild guess), and some devices seem to connect to satellites that are further away rather than nearby Orbi satellites (we have 3 satellites throughout the office)

Other information:

Provider is AT&T business fiber (250up and 250down), and we have 1 static IP address.

Around 40 users (each user has a laptop, and most of them also have their phones connected to the network as well, so around 50~80 devices connected max), and 99% of usage is wireless. There are a few mac minis connected via ethernet in conference rooms.

No remote users (that need our office network access anyways)

Not a lot heavy network usage - most work is browser (image/text) based, but several people stream videos/music while they work as well.

Office is around 17,000 square feet (fairly open, few thin walls)

I guess my main questions are:

  1. Is my setup 'correct'?

  2. What sort of obvious improvements can I make to make our network more efficient?

Thanks!



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