how to connect 20 pcs through lan netorking

[bhupi07]

hello,
i want to connect about 20-25 pc's through lan wired connection or networking for sharing internet and data and also apply firewell sequirty. how could i do that? which instrument i need means like hub etc. i have lease line and router.
thanks.
bhupi

 

[Darkbreeze]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833150144


Your firewall should be a separate piece of hardware or be managed with your router firewall or a software firewall on each client.

 

[bhupi07]

thanks for reply but could you please tell me the how to connect pcs through switch. and router.

 

[Darkbreeze]

The switch connects to the router via an Ethernet cable and the rest of the computers connect to the switch the same way.

http://smallbusiness.chron.com/install-internet-unmanaged-switches-48880.html

If you want faster than 100MB/s speeds and your workstations will have Gigabit Ethernet adapters, you could go with a Gigabit switch instead.

 

[bill001g]

Normally you would place them ISP-----ROUTER----Firewall---switch.

If all you want to do is filter the traffic to the internet and for example block certain sites this will be fairly simple. The firewall can either run as a router or a bridge (ie transparent).

Now if your goal is to restrict traffic between pc in the lan you will need a much more advanced switch and configuration. By default all devices within the switch can talk to each other without restriction. There are 2 solutions to this. If you have simplistic requirements where say you just want to restrict certain groups of machine from talking then you could use simple vlans and let the firewall route/filter between them. If you need more advanced things where you want to restrict traffic between pc in the same vlan you need a switch with a feature called private vlan. This will force all traffic between machines to pass via the firewall.

In any case the cabling is pretty much the same. In the simple case a unmanged switch, if you need simple vlans a slightly better swtich that is managed is needed. The last one you need to look for a feature called private vlan which tends to be on better managed switches.

 

[Darkbreeze]

All true, I just figured somebody who needs to ask for basic information on how to connect 20 machines through a single router might be best served keeping it simple with a decent, if basic, unmanaged switch. If the only purpose of the firewall is to offer SOME protection from intrusions, then the NAT firewall function of the router coupled with a software firewall on the workstations themselves should be adequate. Of course, on systems with more sensitive data a more secure solution may be necessary but in that case I'd think the appropriate IT staff would be involved and wouldn't need to ask these questions.