Saturday, March 31, 2018

Need advice/recommendation on small portable LAN/WAN

I work with a team of highly qualified individuals but they have very little network skill. We are deployed in groups that may be 1-10 miles apart from each other and all gear has to be lightweight, low power, portable and pre-configured. Here is our basic setup:

Team 1 (First arriving team, “Recon”, small group 5-15)

ERX router (192.168.1.X)

Port 1 Primary WAN, not used until broadband available via Nano Beam to Team 2

Port 2 Secondary WAN, failsafe to Port 1, used by cellular or small sat until Primary WAN is available

Port 3 LAN Printer

Port 4 LAN AP

Port 5 LAN 8 port switch (if needed)

Team 2 (Second arriving team, “BoO”, large group 35-80):

ERX router (192.168.2.X)

Port 1 Primary WAN large sat or other broadband

Port 2 Nano Beam to Team 1 (192.168.1.X)

Port 3 Nano Beam to Team 3 (192.168.3.X)

Port 4 LAN AP

Port 5 LAN 16 port switch for PCs, Main Printer, NAS, VOIP

Team 3 (detached mission, “Search”, small group 4-6)

ERX router (192.168.3.X)

Port 1 Primary WAN, not used until broadband available via Nano Beam to Team 2

Port 2 Secondary WAN, failsafe to Port 1, used by cellular or small sat until Primary WAN is available

Port 3 LAN Printer

Port 4 LAN AP

Port 5 LAN 8 port switch (if needed)

I separated the teams IP addresses so as to keep network traffic over the microwave links low and improve performance. However, a new request has been made that any team can print to any printer. Do you think it is wise to put everyone on one big subnet? How else could I get everyone to print to every printer? I am by default the network guy but it is not my everyday job. Just looking for some guidance from people that do this stuff every day. Thanks.



No comments:

Post a Comment