Lan Connection

Hi I am Salman. New To this forum a bit in problem rightnow i have to give a plan of connection to my superior's before they proceed further we have an office with about 20 Machines and we have taken another at about 100-150Metres away and it will be having about 10 Machines i have to get all this in Lan and how to do this i Can't figure out Obviously both the offices are in different buildings Any Help would be Appreciated Thanx in Advance

 

The best way to connect the two networks is via a fibre connection. That means you will need to get in a professional cabler who will advise on the best way to run the cables between the two buildings and should also be able to supply the hardware to connect the networks to the fibre.

The alternative is to use a wireless connection. For this you need line of sight between the buildings. Wireless is cheaper, easier and quicker to set up. However, it is also slower, less robust and more difficult to scale up than fibre. Wireless is also easier to hack into.

So wireless would be OK, but be prepared for occasional losses of connection. Also if you need to upgrade in the future, you will probably have to replace the wireless kit with new.

Fibre would be best. Very much fit and forget. And it will support very high transfer rates, so when you need to upgrade, you just change the devices at each end - the fibre will be able to support faster new equipment.

 

As ReggieB says your best option is Fibre, we recently something similar to a building we have 200m up the street.

We did put in Wireless and it was problematic at best, after running like this for a couple of weeks we quickly decided to drop fibre in instead, since then we have had no problems at all.

Also don't be put off by the thought of fibre it is a lot cheaper than you might expect.

We put the cable in ourselves (just like running cat5) and then got a company in to provide switches and to terminate the fibre, plus they provide 19" cabinet for the switches and it cost just over £1k.

 

Just a query can't i use a cat5 Of Copper wires to connect Instead of fibre Coz for Fibre the wireman needs to be a professional.What i had planned was installing 1Gbps lan on both sides with a switch at both sides than joining the line using Cat5 But was not sure it will work so can u Advise.

 

It will work, but dont put cat5 on the outside of a building unless it is heavily shielded.

If your building is struck by lightning at any point then cat5 will set on fire.

apart from that Fibre is highly expandable so should you increase the amount of users at either site then bandwidth will not become an issue.

 

Yah Ok I understood Thanx for the Advise will keep u all Informed

 

To follow up on the copper between buildings issue:

A major problem is that it is very unlikely that the potential on the earth will be the same for both buildings. You can end up with one building having an easier path to earth via the copper network connection to another building, than it has though its own earth system. The result is you end up running a current across your network cables. This is very hazardous and much more likely than getting hit by lightening.

Also Ethernet (the underlying protocols that run over copper cable) start to break down at cable lengths greater than 100m. You're likely to get excessive collisions on a 100-150m run.

Use fibre. It's by far the best solution.