Overloaded Peer to Peer network

[reptileszz]

Hello, I am the "IT" person for a small office. I put it in quotes as I have no official training but have built on this network for the last 15 years or so. Anyway, it is VASTLY overloaded and there is no money to change over to client/server nor do I have the knowledge to do that. Soooo, we have no less than 17 computers wired to 4 different routers/switches linked together plus one user on a wireless laptop. We all share a normal DSL connection. The DSL goes from their AT&T Utopia modem to my Linksys WRT54GS. All 4 ports are taken up and go to other routers/switches elsewhere in the office. I guess my question is, is there a better router/switch (or routers and switches) to use? We are rebooting this thing or the other routers several times a day to get connectivity back. Thanks for any responses.

 

[Emerald]

you should only have ONE router on your network and that one should be connecting to your Netopia modem.

all other devices should be switches.

can all computers see each other?

if you are using a second router, which port is used on the second router to connected to the main router?
if it is used as an AP is its DHCP turned off?

 

[reptileszz]

Thank you for the response. All the computers can see each other MOST of the time but we are resetting routers/switches all over the place. I think that the "other router/switches" consist of 2 switches and one router but not sure. Not at work today but will check on Monday. Would it be better still if I had one 12 port router coming off the dsl modem with less switches around the office? It would require a lot of rewiring but that would be in the budget I believe.

Thank you so much

 

[reptileszz]

I guess I should mention that at any given time perhaps only 10 computers are actually using the internet off and on with some file sharing. Only 3-4 of the computers are actively sharing files from one computer all the time. There are also 4 printers attached to various computers around the office too. Just an FYI if that helps.

 

[Emerald]

the problem could be the second router.

if it is not configured right, it could comped with the main router.

 

[hang-the-9]

This is way messy. You'll spend more money fixing things than setting it up the right way. With this many computers on the network, who is the master browser for name resolution? Who takes care of user rights to make sure that people are not looking at HR or manager info? What about backups? A random work-group setup like you are using is really only useful for less than a handful of PCs.

Do you even have jacks and patch panels in the office? Or is everything just stuck together with ethernet cords?

Without a major overhaul and some re-wiring and moving things around, you'll continue to have these issues. And that Linksys router is in no way suited to a business environment. And a regular DSL connection for that many computers is probably also too low, what's the bandwidth on it?

If you really can't setup a proper domain for the office, at least use a NAS setup for RAID1 for central file storage and setup the printers on the network instead of being shared out of the computers. Get a real business router, like http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0067PIIR4/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_sr_2?pf_rd_p=486539851&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=B004UAJQN8&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=07N2D5HJTCFWXFNWQCPY and make sure the DSL connection and modem are solid. Get another hard-drive for backups in case the drives in the NAS fail, and you may want to make backups to DVDs if the file sizes permit once in a while, maybe for off-site backups.