In some ways, the company IT infrastructure can be compared to the human construction at a very basic level.
As a person, you certainly care about your health and are very careful. Your company is like a living person. It was born, it will grow and enlarge, will get married, will have kids, and will certainly die one day. As a business owner or an IT manager, your role is to take care of the body of your company.
In this first article, we will see that the IT network infrastructure (LAN Local area Network) is like your arteries, and how to prevent a heart attack, or virus infections or heart disease.
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“How to create your local network (LAN)”
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The IT infrastructure: the arteries of your company
To stay alive need a heart well irrigated by blood. In a company the blood is replaced by data. Data need to move fluently from one endpoint to another. If the data is corrupted, people won’t be able to read the messages or the servers to correctly process the information. The infrastructure (firewalls, routers, switches, AP, cables) is key to create an efficient and secure network.
The router will connect different networks together. It will connect your Local network to the internet network.
The firewall protects the network by filtering the connections and preventing attacks from outside.
The hubs and switches will connect the different end points to your company’s local network.
The access points (AP) link the different endpoints (workstations, laptops, smartphones, DLNA products…)
The cables are the arteries and veins. All the information go through them and you need to rely on
Your challenges
Size your network
If you want to grow you need to distribute data to your users in an efficient manner so that they can accomplish their work. If your network is too slow, people won’t perform, losing time to connect to the internet or the Ethernet (LAN).
It exists different type of switches (desktop or rack-mounted, managed or unmanaged, data transfer speeds), firewall, routers, AP at every prices. Except if you are an IT manager, ask a professional to help you.
Cabling is also very specific with different types of networking cables (twisted, fiber optic, coaxial) and cheap networking cable will influence sensibly the speed and quality of your connections.
Protect your network
Hackers, pirates, angry employees, competitors… may want to access to your information through your network. Do you have any of the following?
- Firewall, to keep unauthorized users off your network
- Virtual private network (VPN), to give employees, customers, and partners secure access to your network
- Intrusion prevention, to detect and stop threats before they harm your network
- Content security, to protect your network from viruses, spam, spyware, and other attacks
- Secure wireless network, to provide safe network access to visitors and employees on the go
- Identity management, to give you control over who and what can access the network
- Compliance validation, to make sure that any device accessing the network meets your security requirements
Monitor your network
Preventive medicine is medical practices that are designed to avert and avoid disease. For example, screening for hypertension and treating it before it causes disease is good preventive medicine. Preventive medicine takes a proactive approach to patient care.
As for humans, networks needs a proactive approach to prevent from intrusion and attacks. Network monitoring is the use of a system that constantly monitors a computer network for slow or failing components and that notifies the network administrator (via email, SMS or other alarms) in the case of outages. (Wikipedia)
What Acuutech can do for your company
Minimizing IT downtime prevents loss of productivity and revenue. Few things in business are as simple. Acuutech selects and deploys the best of breed products, backed by a range of highly cost effective consultancy and support services.
We will help you to:
- Design your network
- Chose the right network infrastructure (firewall, switches, AP)
- Help you for cabling
- Install and supervise your network
Certifications:
- Acuutech is Cisco registered partner. Cisco is a worldwide leader in networking, including associated hardware.
- Acuutech is a Cisco Meraki partner. Cisco Meraki is the leader in cloud controlled WiFi, routing, and security.