Small Business Network Management

Small business network management: just another job or an exciting career? Managing a small business network can be tough work, but it is a fun and exciting career, than provides endless opportunities for learning new technologies and ideas. Although this is a good career choice, there are many times where this job can be frustrating and tough. The frustrating times come when mission critical equipment fails, or a configuration file gets corrupted. First I will talk about the equipment needed to make a small business network function, with minimal errors. Next I will explain the pros and cons to managing a small business network. Lastly I will talk about what I recommend for a small business network.

To start the body off, I will be explaining what equipment is needed to start a small business network. First we have our routers and switches. Routers perform many functions, one of which is serving as a firewall. Computers have tens of thousands of ports, or "doors" as this essay will refer to them as. Without a firewall, all the doors on the computer are unlocked and available for anyone to use. Anyone could be your brother sending an email, or hacker from Indonesia using your computer to send SPAM. Firewall's will recognize all the doors your computer isn't using and lock them, so no one can use the doors, unless you know the password for the firewall. Routers also have various other functions, which may or may not be used by businesses; it all depends on your application. Switches take one internet connection and split it into many connections. Fore example, if you have a cable modem and you want six computers online, you will need to get six IP addresses from your ISP and use a switch to split the one incoming connection. An IP address is like a street address, one per computer or connection to the internet. Switches can also be used as device for connecting computers in a network. If you had seven computers, and only one had a printer which you wanted to share, you would buy a switch to connect all the computers. There is also a combination of the two; a router with switching capabilities. This is the best of both devices. It may be more expensive, but it is definitely worth it. With this device, you only need one IP address because the router hides the computers from the outside world, remember all the doors it locked? The router will give all the computers its own IP address, called private IP address. You can have up to 254 devices plugged into a router with switching capabilities.

The next hardware category is servers. There are many styles and looks to servers, whether it be a desktop or rack mount, blue or orange lights; they all do the same essential thing. What kind of server does a small business need? For small business, fewer than 50 employees, I would recommend an "Office Server". Have no fear; I will explain to you what an "office server" is. The office server we have in my office runs Microsoft Windows Server 2003. All the workstations in the office are connected to the server, and everyone's documents, mail, desktops, start menu's and everything else they work on are stored on this server, automatically. This server is also backed-up every night, so there is little chance of losing something. This isn't the only type of server, some businesses have their own mail server, or web server which hosts their web page, or maybe even an eCommerce server, which people can buy their products from. The easiest and most overall solution is going to be the "office server".

Workstations come next in our hardware lineup. Workstation are what all the employees work on. My office has multiple levels of workstations, because not every employee has the same job description. The customer service representatives have generic, entry level workstations because their computers don't need to handle any heavy loads, and they cost around $1500. On the other end of the spectrum, our marketing computer needs to handle big programs, like Adobe Photoshop, and Adobe Premier Pro. These programs need a vast amount of resources, so obviously the CSR computers wouldn't work for that. The marketing computer cost around $4000. Depending on what your company does, or needs, will correlate to what type and robustness of workstations you need.

The last topic, Internet access devices can be tricky to decide on. There are a lot of ways to connect to the internet. Depending on what your business needs will relate to what type of connection you should get. The company I work for is an Internet Service Provider, so we have a fiber optic connection to the internet, which handles all our internet users. Most of our small business customers have a cable modem, which provides them with 6-8 Meg of bandwidth. As a comparison, Comcast has a business class service that gets around 6 Meg download, which is plenty for a small business. 6 Meg download speed is a lot compared to the much sought after T1 connection, before the days of a cable modem. T1's are capable of getting 1.544 Meg download, and it is made up of 24 telephone lines. If you are on the big end of small business, you might consider paying more for a faster connection type.

The next categories I will be talking about are the pros and cons to managing a small business network. This is the toughest part of the industry to explain, because managing a small business network can vary in so many ways that the pros and cons could be different for each. Pros to managing a small business network can include a feeling of accomplishment and satisfaction. The feeling of accomplishment can come from overcoming an obstacle, solving a problem or implementing new and better equipment. The feeling of satisfaction can come from knowing you are doing a good job, and completing all your work with perfection. These feelings can increase morale and performance on the job. All these things will lead to you doing a better job, and making your work environment a happier place.

Along with pros, there are usually always cons; "Technology a two-edged sword" (Enbysk). Managing a small business network is no different, tough times can arise. Problems that can arise could be as little as a computer not connecting to the internet, all the way to your office server crashing. Although these problems can be fixed, someone will most likely not be happy and want to complain, which can be your biggest headache as a small business network manager; People. People always have problems, some due to their level of computer knowledge, or due to their personality. Most of a manager's time is dealing with employees, so they should be good at that. Fixing the problems can also be troublesome, especially if you don't know what is going on, or what caused the problem. But through all the problems, there is light at the end of