Networking

Networking your computers is an efficient way to share your systems. Once you have a network in place at your home office, or business, you can immediately use the benifits of working in a network environment.

File Sharing

Advantages

The many advantages of file sharing rather than storing your files on your local computer or notebook PC, you store them in a central location where every one can get access to them, and setup systems such as automatic scheduled backups, automatic virus scanning of files to keep your systems clean from virus infections, security of your files can easily be applied so that only people or employees allowed to have access to certain files or directories can have access to them.

Local file storing problems

The problem with storing important files, photos and documents on your local machine is that backups do not occur automatically, if you lose or have your notebook stolen, then your data is lost forever.

What is needed to make file sharing work? You will need a Server, which is a dedicated box or computer solely for the purpose of storing your files and performing basic daily duties such as back ups and virus scanning.

Printer sharing

Lower the cost of printing in your office by sharing the office printer. Many laser printers have the option to have a built in print server that allows more than one user to print to that printer. This means fewer printers in the office to maintain, reduced amounts of different toner cartridges which ultimately results in reduced cost of operating your business

Internet and email

Once you have a network, you can then give everyone access to the internet and email services.

Sharing the internet services is easy to setup. Reduce your internet bills by sharing your internet connection. You can share a broadband ADSL or Cable connection or even a dedicated business dial up account if your area does not yet have broadband access.

What is needed for networking your office

All your computers, printers and servers need to be connected.

To connect thsese components, they have to have a network interface card inside them, and now days, most computers come with these.

Then you need to have a network switch. It's a box that all the cables gets connected to. Without this, the computers cannot "talk" to each other.

Connect your systems through data cables. These are simular to phone cables but with more wires in them, so instead of 2 wires, they have 8 or 4 pairs of cables.

For most workstations we recommend two data ports to be near by. One for phone and the other for the computer.

Once all computers have a connection to each other through the network switch, then they are all the network.

For best efficiency, a dedicated server is recommended to give you additional network functionality as mentioned above (File sharing, Printer sharing, Internet sharing).