Welcome to the 90s! It's a great time to be automating our offices—we have so many choices. More and more, those choices are going to involve networking our offices. Unfortunately, given so many choices, it's sometimes difficult to decide what to do. You may have heard about the capabilities and possibilities in linking your office PCs together. You may have even been reading up on the subject. Many magazines specialize in networking. You may have also found out the limitations of these sources of information. Simply: much of this information is aimed at the networking of an entire office, business, or firm, dealing with hundreds or thousands of PCs.
September 1998
Well, heck. You might have one or two PCs for doing your bills. Perhaps a typist or two has one on their desk. You might even be forward thinking, and have a dozen around the office. But a hundred? Scattered across the country? NOT!
It's more likely you've got a small business, with a planned total maximum number of personal computers considerably fewer than, say, thirty. You probably would laugh at the idea of a full-time computer manager (hey, that's YOU). You want the answers to a few simple questions: What should you really do? What is the inexpensive way to do it? What's real and what's not? Where do you turn? In short, what's practical for you?
That's where this column will come in. I hope to examine some of the major decisions and options you'll encounter, and answer some of the key questions, as well as a hundred-dollar-an-hour consultant could—but without charge. I'll present solutions I have seen work, including those I've tried myself.
I'll try to answer questions. This will be an exchange of lessons learned, so you will not have to go through the learning experience from scratch.
Where am I coming from? As a computer engineer, I have designed and installed networks for three employers. I have also consulted with customers (much like you) in solving their problems. As a result of encountering many problems, I have also had to learn how to solve them. Therefore, this column will present a practical guide on how you can achieve the same results.
The first issue I'd like to share with you is the choice you will have in wiring. Why first? If you're considering rewiring your office—say, installing new phones—or moving, or remodelling, you should absolutely consider wiring issues first. When there are great, big holes in the wall, running some extra wires is easy. After the plastering is complete, it can be very, very expensive. My advice? You should plan well ahead, and take an opportunity to arrange for proper network wiring in advance, when it's cheap to do so.
The network wiring issue is the "physical layer" of the network. This is the way in which the computers will be physically connected. You have two "topologies" to select: bus, or star. With a bus layout, you will have a wire running from computer A to computer B to computer C to... and so on. With a star layout, you will run a wire directly from a central point to where each computer will be placed: a separate wire for each computer. I'll get back to the practical side of this in a moment.
There are three types of wire you can run. The most expensive is fiber optics—two strands per computer, wired in a star, precisely manufactured to the correct length (or set up by someone who really knows what they're doing). This option is so expensive that I can't figure out who would ever need it. I ran some tests with Thomas-Conrad's super-fast TCNS system, which permits either fiber optics or coax cable. The coax was faster. You probably don't need fiber optics in your office.
The second type is called UTP, or unshielded-twisted-pair. That is, it's telephone wire. This is also wired in a star. But beware—there are different grades of UTP: category 1, category 2, and so forth (The greater the number, the better the wire). I would suggest you install at least category 5, and make darn sure you have an installer who knows the difference, since the quality of the telephone-like connectors at each end of the wire will contribute to the success of the installation.
The third type is coax. There are two different types of coax: RG-62 (Arcnet) and RG-58 (EtherNet). Unless you're using the star-wired TCNS system mentioned above (which is very expensive and very fast), you probably will want to ignore the RG-62 and go to RG-58, or more properly, RG-58 A/U CL2 (Thin EtherNet) (You should also ignore Thick EtherNet cable. You don't need it; it's obsolescent). This cable is readily available at Radio Shack and most electronic supply houses, so you can shop around. You would wire this in a bus topology. It uses "BNC" connectors at the ends.
As far as I can tell, the UTP and the RG-58/BNC cable are both widely supported and easily available. In fact, recently, it seems to me that the UTP wiring is gaining an ascendancy. But, there's pros and cons to each.
If you wire UTP, you will spend more money. You will be wiring a star. This means that in a wiring closet, somewhere, you will place a "hub". This is a box of electronics, into which you will plug the wires coming from each computer in your office. It costs money—say, $25 to $200 per PC. Moreover, you cannot expand the network past the number of wires you run to computers (called "drops") and the number of positions in your hub—without spending more money to rewire or add more or larger hubs. You can run drops of between 125 and 375 feet each (depending on what network type you're using).
However, in a new installation, when you can run network wires at the same time as you run telephone wires, when your office layout makes a hub/drop star system convenient, and when you don't expect much change, then UTP is definitely the way to go. I think of UTP, personally, as a good second-best solution.
The cons of a coax wiring system are several. Your office may not be laid out in a way that makes it convenient to run the wires from point to point. You also may have too many machines, or too long a distance, to make it practical. And, there's always a problem with the "What if someone unplugs it?" problem, which I have a solution for (below). But, think of the pros: for a small office, no electronic boxes (hubs) are required; you can easily add additional connections; and it's quick and easy. Assuming you have a small office, and under thirty PCs in your future, I believe that coax is the only way to go. Moreover, it costs less and works just as well.
I believe that you will find yourself well-served by wiring your office properly with coax cable. In the next column, I'll tell you how to install coax cable without the problems that cause other people to shun this method. I'll also talk about the basic rules which govern the 10-base-T standard, also called Thin EtherNet, and how to plan wiring your office inexpensively and effectively. I'll also talk about how to cheat, and save even more. If you have any questions, feel free to send them in care of the editor of this magazine, and I'll try to work them in. See you there—and, in the meantime, think practical!
Six Easy Lessons
Here's how to set up a simple network in your small office.
