Back to the Basics: Networking
Your Small Business
by: Ramon Ray 
Lonely computers make unproductive small businesses. I'm sure many of you
have already networked your computers, have fancy collaboration, email and
the works. However, there is a large chunk of you who, for whatever reason,
haven’t taken the time to network your office computers.
Why should you network your computers?
► Networking your computers will enable all your employees to
share technology resources such as printers, CD ROMs etc. from their own
individual computers.
► You'll be able to have one Internet connection (either standard
analog modem, or broadband) for all the computers. There will be no need
for 10 AOL accounts and 10 dial-up modems.
► Instead of having things stored on only one computer, your work
can more easily be shared and worked on by everyone, a team, or just one
person without worrying what computer the information is on.
► You can add several collaborative tools to your network such
as a shared calendar, accounting program, Intranet and etc.
Setting up a network yourself is not very hard if you know what you’re
doing. But if not I'd really recommend that you contact a computer consultant
to do it for you. If you have a very small office (two or three computers)
then the computers can be connected in a peer to peer network without
a central server. All the PC's share each other's hard drives and resources.
For larger offices (four or more computers) I would advise setting up
a client/server network. A client/server network has a central server
as the repository for all office files and your Internet connection. All
the other (client) computers would connect to this server.
Each computer needs a network interface card and network cable to connect
them all to a hub. The hub is a small device that routes the information
between the network to the server and/or to other computers on the network.
Server >>>> Hub >>>>> Client Computers >>>>>Client
Computers
Once you have the physical connections all hooked up, you'll want to
purchase a program to operate the network efficiently, manage security,
access files, share an Internet connection, etc.
There are solutions that provide individual network solutions (hardware
and software solutions) such as INTEL's InBusiness line of networking
products, WEBRamp, 3COM, HP, Cisco and others. I've found the best solution
for client/server networks to be Microsoft's Small Business Server http://www.microsoft.com/smallbusinessserver.
Talk to your consultant and have her/him give you all the details. As
a small business owner it's important that you leverage all the technology
resources you can.
I'm sure there are many more reasons to network your computers. Share
them with me! mailto:networkreasons@smallbiztechnology.com
Check out the November 1999 issue of Home Office Computing http://www.smalloffice.com
for a special insert on home networking technology Ramon Ray ramon@smallbiztechnology.com
http://www.smallbiztechnology.com
Small business technology analyst and consultant Editor, Small Business
Technology Report
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