IT question for you computer guys

[maroonandwhite]

I'm sure someone on here is a little tech savvy so here goes. At work right now we are running three computers networked together through a router and one of the computers is hosting our quick-books company file. We are planning on updating that router to a gigabit switch and putting that company file on a networked hard drive to speed it all up a little. My question is would it be better to just plug the computers and hard drive into the switch and assign static ip's (which i'm not sure how to do)or could i plug the router in the switch as well and let it assign ip's?

[MacGyver]

For a company your size, it probably doesn't matter, and frankly, you seemed to have answered your own question.* Assigning static IP addresses is not hard, but DHCP through the router should work just fine for you.

*

Make sure you lock down the router, and consider making your available DHCP pool match the number of physical devices you have to increase your security.

[Guest uofmeet]

I would prob just let the router assign IP's. But, which ever computer is hosting the quick book file you could assign a static. That way it never changes and should be able to find the file when needed.

[maroonandwhite]

Ok thanks. My problem with computer networking is that I know a little about a lot of things. I can usually tinker around with stuff and search enough online to figure it out but I think I will go the DHCP route with the router. I just wasn't sure if it would actually still assign the IP's like that but I'm pretty sure I know what you mean on the DHCP pool.

[maroonandwhite]

I would prob just let the router assign IP's. But, which ever computer is hosting the quick book file you could assign a static. That way it never changes and should be able to find the file when needed.

The quick books file will now be on the networked hard drive. Is it safe to say this should be a plug and play process for the most part if I use the router to assign IP's? Also we are updating to the gigabit switch to try and get the faster transfer speeds. Will having a 100mb (or less) connection on the router effect this?

[vontar]

With only 3-4 computers, I would lock down the DHCP pool as well, with Static IPs. If the router has wifi, unless you are using wifi in the office I would disable it. If you are using it, I would enable encryption WPA2.

DHCP would be fine, should not effect speed in any measurable way with only 3-4 PCs.

I can not help with the quickbooks part as I have never used quickbooks.

I use static IPs in my house, but you don't even want to know what I have going on. Multiple PCs, 2 xbox media centers, 2 laptops, 2 droid X wifi (those on a separate wifi with only 2 wifi DHCP IPs)

4 linksys routers, all of which have been hacked with 3rd party Firmware DD WRT, 3 of which are acting as wifi bridges. I have everything encrypted.

I really need a tinfoil hat just to walk around in my home due to wifi pollution.

Edited January 13, 2011 by vontar

[Guest uofmeet]

you can upgrade to gigabit, but you prob won't notice a difference speed wise. not unless you are transferring VERY LARGE files across the network. like 500mb+

[Jonnin]

If the router is slower, you want to just plug everything into the switch with static IP. If you put the router in the loop and it is slower, the extra speed from the switch is not used!

If they are windows computers, its not hard to change to static IP address. Hit the checkbox to change it from automatically assigned to manual, then enter the IP address, and there is built in help for it if you need it. If unix, you hax on the text files that do the same thing, you need to get someone who knows which files to change and how or look it up in your help or online, its not hard but you have to have some know-how to do it. I do not remember it off the top of my head, I have about 20 unix books I have to dig thru when this stuff comes up.

Its usually a bad plan to plug a router into a switch: the switch, unless very powerful than most, cannot handle this (I am not up on modern switches though, they may be able to do this, or not, I do not know!). Its ok to plug a switch into a router however. Routers are fairly smart and can handle this, switches are fairly dumb and cannot (or the old ones I have cannot).

[maroonandwhite]

Ok here is a dumb question. If I were to use static IP addressees what will I be setting them to. I know the last few numbers are all that matters but will I be matching them to the hard drive? the switch? thats where I get confused.

[bubbadavis]

Make sure they are all on the same subnet. The standard is to use 192.168.x.x for private networks. You will have to setup the gateway, DNS, etc. correctly - assuming these machines have a way to get to the internet.

[Jonnin]

Hard drives dont have an IP address. The router may, the switch may, and every computer does.

You can use one of 3 sets for a LAN:

10.XXX.XXX.XXX

172.XXX.XXX.XXX

192.XXX.XXX.XXX

Pick one and use it. For example, use 192.1.1.1, 192.1.1.2, 192.1.1.3, ... for each item. Keep the first 3 numbers the same and vary the last one unless you have more than 256 computers.

Edit: oops, the second value is defined as well in the standard LAN ones.

10.anything

172.16.anything (16 to 31 are ok for second value)

192.168.anything (168 ONLY).

Its been a long time for me.

Edited January 13, 2011 by Jonnin

[maroonandwhite]

Make sure they are all on the same subnet. The standard is to use 192.168.x.x for private networks. You will have to setup the gateway, DNS, etc. correctly - assuming these machines have a way to get to the internet.

Each computer is using one of the verizon USB cards to access the internet. Not sure if that matters with the DNS and gateway settings but the switch is only being used to share the quickbooks company file between computers. It is almost a 200mb file.

[Jonnin]

Do you modify this file a lot? If it does not change much, you might consider having one person in charge of modifications and everyone else get a local copy of the file once a day/week/month/year or something.

If your network only exists to modify this file, the internet does not matter, as you are using different hardware for each network they may as well be different machines.

If your computers are hot enough, you can compress the file and access it from inside a zip file directly, which uses more local CPU and less networking, it will transfer faster compressed and probably compress to 50% or less original size.

There may be other things you could do depending on what is really going on.

[maroonandwhite]

I don't believe these computers could handle uncompressing the file like that. Yes we do modify this file throughout the day every day so that wouldn't be an option. The main problem is the speed of accessing the file. The local computer that the file is on has no problem quickly doing any tasks but the two other workstations are quite a bit slower. I believe it is to due the file being located on that computer rather than a server or a location that is not busy doing other tasks. My understanding is that the host computer completes any tasks that it is doing locally before any requested shared files are sent out.

[LagerHead]

you can upgrade to gigabit, but you prob won't notice a difference speed wise. not unless you are transferring VERY LARGE files across the network. like 500mb+

True dat. Most networks don't use the bandwidth they have available. Most of the time your Internet link is going to be your bottleneck.

Ok here is a dumb question. If I were to use static IP addressees what will I be setting them to. I know the last few numbers are all that matters but will I be matching them to the hard drive? the switch? thats where I get confused.

Seriously, you gain no advantage by using static IP addresses. It's not more secure. It makes zero difference in speed. And it increases the administrative burden. My advice would be to leave DHCP running, ensure all of your computers are patched properly, and block access to your file server from outside the network. As a matter of fact, I wouldn't even let it access the Internet except to get updates. Get a firewall or run a software firewall on all of your computers. And by firewall I don't mean the software in the Linksys router.

[Tobashadow]

Each computer is using one of the verizon USB cards to access the internet. Not sure if that matters with the DNS and gateway settings but the switch is only being used to share the quickbooks company file between computers. It is almost a 200mb file.

So they have usb wireless cards for Internet access and wired network also for local file share?

Ewww thats just a slew of problems rolled into one.

A file shared on the network is treated a little stranger then some people think, when you open the file it is cloned into a temp file on the local computer which means it has to be fully transfered to be opened on the local machine and that includes every time it is saved the file is fully transfered back to the remote machine.

There is two methods you could use to speed up access to the file.

A: Remote desktop into a local machine that has the file on it and make the changes over remote desktop so that you are not transferring the file to make changes to it.

or

B: Make two QuickBook files, a combined large file and a weekly or monthly file depending upon your needs to make it smaller and at a agreed cycle based on the smaller file have someone use a combining utility to move over the data to the larger file, i have used the software here to do that - QuickBooks To QuickBooks Data Transfers

[bigwakes]

I would use DHCP and either lock the physical ports or us MAC filtering for security. As long as the Server is not connected to the web you should be fine. Can Quickbooks just be accessed on the server and altered like a database without being downloaded to the local machine? You might be able to do a PC Anywhere type software and not have Quickbooks on any machine besides the server.

[maroonandwhite]

I'm not sure if you can do it like that or not. I don't believe so but we do have Quick books installed on each computer but will be accessing the company file on the networked hard drive.

[Guest Lester Weevils]

Have you decided on a brand of network drive?

I suppose any mainline product you spend thousands of dollars on, would work great.

Maybe cheapies would work great too, but I've thought about getting a network drive here, and done way too much internet shopping trying to pick one. There were a lot of user complaints about all the cheap ones, every time I've tried to find one I'd like.

The only products with user reviews that looked like something I'd care to rely on daily, were a lot more expensive than what I wanted to pay.

I only mention that detail because you didn't mention your budget. I'm really cheap, but realize not everybody is.

What looked maybe better than buying a turn-key net drive-- There are open source linux dedicated net drive OS you can download, and they are compact enough to run off a thumb drive. A person could build an ordinary PC, load it up with a RAID of terabyte drives, and run one of those free linux net drive OS.

Reviewers seem overall happy with that solution, it doesn't cost a fortune, and generally a decently-built computer lasts a long time, when you really don't know what corners a company cut making you a cheap net drive. And a dedicated PC stuffed with good-quality terabyte drives is still cheaper than the "top quality" net drives.

Anyway, just thinking out loud. Haven't tried it yet.

[maroonandwhite]

Yeah we just bought a Buffallo Technology Live link or something to that effect. It was the 1TB model. Nothing fancy.

[Guest Lester Weevils]

Yeah we just bought a Buffallo Technology Live link or something to that effect. It was the 1TB model. Nothing fancy.

Kewl! Those are sposed to be some of the good ones.

[maroonandwhite]

So my final question. If I go with DHCP from the router through the switch is it just that simple? Just plug it in and it will recognize everything and assign IP address's? Again to clarify I will have an 8 port switch with a hard drive, 3 computers, and one router attached to it. Nothing else.

[Jonnin]

It should be ok to do that. I am still a little confused at the setup. Can you not just plug it all into the router, if you are going to do that, and sell your switch back since you do not need it? I don't get why you need the switch, I guess, though it sounds like it will work.

Oh, and the idea of breaking up your big file sounds great to me. If you could split it somehow into smaller files, the performance of your computers that use the file(s) would improve drastically.

[maroonandwhite]

Well we are using this switch for two reasons: the first because the router only has 4 ports and we are planning on adding two computers eventually and the second to try and speed up the transfer between devices. The router is only up to 100mb where as the switch is 1000mb. As far as breaking the file up we routinely need fast access to every customer record we have. We could split it up but to be honest the boss man doesn't want to do that.

[bubbadavis]

Do the PC's have GB NICs? Having a 1GB switch is great but if the individual computers only have 100MB NICs, it won't help performance much.